Define society. Distinguish between society and community.

One way to define a society is to say that it is a group of people who all share a common culture, who all live in a given territory, and who are relatively independent of people outside of their territory.  We generally use the term “society” to refer to the population of an entire country rather than to parts of a country.  This is the major difference between a society and a community.

A community...

One way to define a society is to say that it is a group of people who all share a common culture, who all live in a given territory, and who are relatively independent of people outside of their territory.  We generally use the term “society” to refer to the population of an entire country rather than to parts of a country.  This is the major difference between a society and a community.

A community is also a group of people who share a similar set of cultural assumptions and values.  However, these are generally people who live in a smaller geographic space and who tend to interact with one another on a fairly frequent basis.  People in a community all live near to one another.  This allows them to interact regularly.  These factors are not true of the people in an entire society.

So, at least, to social scientists, communities are distinct from societies because they are a small scale phenomenon whose members interact regularly.  Societies are people who share a common culture and a common (though large) geographic territory and who do not necessarily interact with one another often (if at all).