If we consider society as a social system, then first we need to touch on its structure. Society as a social system includes various elements of the system and the connections between them. Elements of society are social groups (small and large), social institutions and individuals, as well as relationships between individuals, groups, between an individual and a group, etc. The place or position that a social element occupies, whether it is an individual or a group, is called social status. The function that a social element performs is called a social role in sociology.
Social public relations play the role of social ties between elements of the social system. Social communication is a set of facts that determine the interactive activity of individuals in certain communities to achieve any goals. Society as a social system determines in many respects the relations that develop in society, which reflect the political, economic, and cultural specifics of a particular society.
Sustainable social relations arise when social interactions are constantly reproduced, while their intensity can vary greatly. For example, after a young man (boy or girl) leaves his parents' house, social connections and relations between them do not stop, although there may not be direct contacts. However, family relations, memory, the presence of their images in the minds of the young man remain, which allows us to say that social ties and relations between them continue.
Of course, there are no unified, once and for all defined laws of social interaction. Society as a social system in many respects determines the nature of such interactions, depending on many factors that can be considered as two groups: the first we assign objective, for example, the socio-cultural specifics of a particular society, and the second - subjective, which include personal characteristics individuals (worldview, values, attitudes, personality orientation, etc.).
The individual acts in continuous interaction with other people. However, society as a social system has a huge impact on interacting individuals, regulating their activities, encouraging or punishing them. In addition, people themselves have a permanent influence on each other. An individual can also significantly affect his immediate, and not very, social environment, for example, when he sets an example of concrete actions. If we take into account such multifaceted, multidirectional and continuous influences that are present everywhere in the social environment, then we can talk about a system that possesses qualities that are not characterized by any of its elements separately.
Society as an integral social system has its own specific laws. For example, sustainability, dynamism and openness, emergence and synergy, the ability to self-preservation and self-development.
With all the variety of theoretical approaches to the consideration of society as a social system, three theoretical models of society can be distinguished .
The first model considers society as a set of acting people, as a result of their joint activities (E. Durkheim, T. Parsons). The second model is based on the fact that in society the priority is not individuals, but their associations, unions (K. Marx, R. Darendorf). And, finally, the third model is associated with a certain metaphysical understanding of what is social using the separation method when considering social processes and phenomena (A. Schyutz, J. Mead, N. Luman, P. Bourdieu).