Although the following article has not been revised for this edition of the Encyclopedia, the substantive coverage is currently appropriate. The editors have provided a list of recent works at the end of the article to facilitate research and exploration of the topic. It is necessary to highlight this central area selectively, considering the breadth and variety in its specification, and to emphasize current concerns, relying on past overviews to detail their origins (e.g., by Znaniecki 1945; Gerth and Mills 1953; Faris 1964; Eisenstadt 1968; Parsons 1968; Udy 1968; Smelser 1988). Social organization is nonrandom pattern within human populations that comprise society by sharing the main aspects of a common existence over time as well as nonrandom patterning, the human and interhuman activities through which patterns are formed, retained, altered, or replaced. These twin aspects of social organization had been considered structure, relatively stable patterns of interrelations among persons or other social units, and process, the manner in which the patterns are produced, reproduced, or transformed (see, e.g., Faris 1964). The distinction is blurred to the extent that interrelations vary in degrees of regularity, uniformity, and permanence in the rhythms of coexistence, contact, or avoidance of which they consist (Williams 1976). In short, structure can also be viewed as patterned process among human agents (e.g., Blumer 1969, pp. 78–89; Giddens 1979, pp. 49–95; Coleman 1990, esp. pp. 1–44). At issue is not what is patterned or how, but simply the extent to which there is any pattern or patterning at all. The antithesis of social organization is not opposition or discord. Conflict and other aspects of tension or unrest can, for example, exhibit regularity and uniformity as readily as can union, harmony, and tranquillity. Rather it is randomness, consisting of chaos, formlessness, and idiosyncratic human behavior (Blau 1975) and is called social disorganization. Yet patterned occurrence of disorganization is no contradiction. Social organization is characterized by interdependence—that is, what occurs among certain components has, to varying degree, consequences for some or all of the other components and their relations with one another. These consequences can range from loss, even annihilation, to survival and other types of gain. Subsumed are regulation and stability as well as replacement and transformation. The socially organized units or sets of units are generally activities or actors, individual or plural, that affect one another more immediately—even if simply by coexisting or by their sheer numbers — than do other activities or actors. The former are therefore distinguished (to varying extents) from an environment that might include those other units.

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it would be a very different experience for Columbus

f Columbus arrived in the US in 2015, he would likely be very surprised at the changes that have occurred since he first landed in the “New World” in 1492. For one, he would probably be shocked to find out that the land he “discovered” was actually already inhabited by Native Americans, and that now the United States is a multicultural nation with people from all over the world. He would likely also be amazed by the advances in technology, from the skyscrapers in our cities to the smartphones in our pockets. Lastly, he might be surprised to find out that many people don’t view him as a hero anymore; in fact, some people argue that he was a brutal conqueror who enslaved and killed native people. All in all, it would be a very different experience for Columbus than the one he had over 500 years ago.

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