I submit the need to establish a comparative study of societies, namely groups beyond a simple, immediate family that have the potential to endure for generations, whose constituent individuals recognize one another as members, and that maintain control over access to a physical space. This definition, with refinements and ramifications I explore, serves for cross-disciplinary research since it applies not just to nations but to diverse hunter-gatherer and tribal groups with a pedigree that likely traces back to the societies of our common ancestor with the chimpanzees. It also applies to groups among other species for which comparison to humans can be instructive. Notably, it describes societies in terms of shared group identification rather than social interactions. An expansive treatment of the topic is overdue given that the concept of a society (even the use of such synonyms as primate “troop”) has fallen out of favor among biologists, resulting in a semantic mess; while sociologists rarely consider societies beyond nations, and social psychologists predominantly focus on ethnicities and other component groups of societies. I examine the relevance of societies across realms of inquiry, discussing the ways member recognition is achieved; how societies compare to other organizational tiers; and their permeability, territoriality, relation to social networks and kinship, and impermanence. We have diverged from our ancestors in generating numerous affiliations within and between societies while straining the expectation of society memberships by assimilating diverse populations. Nevertheless, if, as I propose, societies were the first, and thereafter the primary, groups of prehistory, how we came to register society boundaries may be foundational to all human “groupiness.” A discipline-spanning approach to societies should further our understanding of what keeps societies together and what tear them apart.

中文翻译：

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什么是社团？建立跨学科视角及其重要性

我认为有必要对社会进行比较研究，即超越简单的直系亲属的群体，这些群体有可能世代相传，其组成个体相互承认彼此为成员，并保持对进入物理空间的控制。这个定义经过我探索的改进和衍生，可用于跨学科研究，因为它不仅适用于国家，也适用于不同的狩猎采集者和部落群体，其谱系可能可以追溯到我们与黑猩猩共同祖先的社会。它也适用于其他物种中的群体，与人类进行比较可能具有启发性。值得注意的是，它根据共享的群体认同而不是社会互动来描述社会。鉴于社会的概念（甚至使用灵长类“群体”等同义词）已经不再受到生物学家的青睐，导致语义混乱，因此早就应该对这个话题进行广泛的讨论；社会学家很少考虑国家以外的社会，而社会心理学家则主要关注种族和社会的其他组成群体。我研究了跨调查领域的社会的相关性，讨论了获得成员认可的方式；社会与其他组织层级相比如何；以及它们的渗透性、地域性、与社交网络和亲属关系的关系以及无常性。我们与我们的祖先不同，我们在社会内部和社会之间建立了众多的联系，同时通过同化不同的人口来限制社会成员的期望。然而，如果像我提出的那样，社会是史前时期第一个群体，并且是此后的主要群体，那么我们如何记录社会边界可能是所有人类“群体性”的基础。对社会采取跨学科的方法应该可以加深我们对是什么让社会团结在一起以及什么使社会分裂的理解。