 Dear students, in this module we are going to discuss the characteristics of society. Generally, as we know that every society possesses a particular structure, however we have some common features that can specifically denote what society is. Like for example, the number of individuals, society is composed of many or certain number of individuals and then those individuals should have a common interest. By common interest we mean that that can revolve around their life ideologies, their purpose of life, their goals of life, as well as the system, a specific system of social interaction in which the common language can be an important factor, the use of symbols, the culture and the characteristics of that culture can be shared. For example, we see that in a society, the culture is shared in a way that they wear a uniform, they use the same language, for communication, and the same way, the way they live and live can be the same. Then we see that their social institutions, like the institutions of education, for example, there are schools, colleges, universities, schools, their common characteristics are other institutions, like political institutions, economic institutions, family institutions, their characteristics are identical. Then an important factor is that their geographic boundaries are the same, the geographic boundaries are specifically covering the number of people. So it is not necessary that the geographic boundaries define their culture distinctively or can be distinguished from other cultures. But this is an important characteristic, based on which we decide that we can call the people living in one place a society or not. Then another important factor which we call interdependency, interdependence means that the people living in the members of society are influenced by each other. It is not that individuals live in isolation to each other, because it is almost impossible, a person is called a social animal. A social animal means that it participates in a group life or a collective activity. So the group activity is based on interdependency. In other words, we influence each other in our work. For example, we need a school for our children, we need school teachers, we need shopkeepers, where they can do the grocery, the people who are the grocery man, they may need a driver, a transportation, and in this way, it is a very complex network of interrelationship and interdependency. Based on this network of interdependency, we distinguish a society from another society because of their distinctive roles and status. Then definitely when interdependency happens, there are also corporations, conflicts, and division of labour. In the next modules, we will define them distinctively that what does cooperation, conflict, and division of labour mean? It means that every society does not have a static, it has dynamism, it has changing characteristics. We do not observe the same characteristics throughout the historical period. Societies are always subject to change. So this is also the characteristic of society. Thank you.