Social unit is a term used in sociology

Sociology

Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...

, anthropology

Anthropology

Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...

, ethnology

Ethnology

Ethnology is the branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the origins, distribution, technology, religion, language, and social structure of the ethnic, racial, and/or national divisions of humanity.-Scientific discipline:Compared to ethnography, the study of single groups through direct...

, and also in animal behaviour studies

Ethology

Ethology is the scientific study of animal behavior, and a sub-topic of zoology....

, zoology

Zoology

Zoology |zoölogy]]), is the branch of biology that relates to the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct...

 and biology

Biology

Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...

 to describe a social entity which is part of and participates in a larger social group or society

Society

A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...

.

According to Dimitrie Gusti

Dimitrie Gusti

Dimitrie Gusti was a Romanian sociologist, ethnologist, historian, and voluntarist philosopher; a professor at the University of Iaşi and the University of Bucharest, he served as Romania's Minister of Education in 1932-1933...

, society is composed of "social units," as groups of humans linked by a voluntary organizing activity and interconnected spiritually.

A different use of "social unit" is where it may be used to mean a discrete transactable commodity within a society.

Some social units

Any such list will be inherently culturally and temporally embedded, and hence problematic to order. Some social units in the 21st century human

Human

Humans are the only living species in the Homo genus...

 Anglosphere

Anglosphere

Anglosphere is a neologism which refers to those nations with English as the most common language. The term can be used more specifically to refer to those nations which share certain characteristics within their cultures based on a linguistic heritage, through being former British colonies...

, roughly in order of number of unit members and secondly in order of power are:

• Alien
  Alien (law)
  In law, an alien is a person in a country who is not a citizen of that country.-Categorization:Types of "alien" persons are:*An alien who is legally permitted to remain in a country which is foreign to him or her. On specified terms, this kind of alien may be called a legal alien of that country...
  
  , stateless person, asylum seeker, refugee
  Refugee
  A refugee is a person who outside her country of origin or habitual residence because she has suffered persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or because she is a member of a persecuted 'social group'. Such a person may be referred to as an 'asylum seeker' until...
  
  
• Person
  Person
  A person is a human being, or an entity that has certain capacities or attributes strongly associated with being human , for example in a particular moral or legal context...
  
  
• Citizen
• Partnership, marriage
  Marriage
  Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...
  
  
• Families
• Household
  Household
  The household is "the basic residential unit in which economic production, consumption, inheritance, child rearing, and shelter are organized and carried out"; [the household] "may or may not be synonymous with family"....
  
  
• Neighbourhood
  Neighbourhood
  A neighbourhood or neighborhood is a geographically localised community within a larger city, town or suburb. Neighbourhoods are often social communities with considerable face-to-face interaction among members. "Researchers have not agreed on an exact definition...
  
  
• Clan
  Clan
  A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship and descent. Even if lineage details are unknown, clan members may be organized around a founding member or apical ancestor. The kinship-based bonds may be symbolical, whereby the clan shares a "stipulated" common ancestor that is a...
  
  
• Tribe
  Tribe
  A tribe, viewed historically or developmentally, consists of a social group existing before the development of, or outside of, states.Many anthropologists use the term tribal society to refer to societies organized largely on the basis of kinship, especially corporate descent groups .Some theorists...
  
  
• Community
  Community
  The term community has two distinct meanings:*a group of interacting people, possibly living in close proximity, and often refers to a group that shares some common values, and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household...
  
  
• Village
  Village
  A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet with the population ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand , Though often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighbourhoods, such as the West Village in Manhattan, New...
  
  , town
  Town
  A town is a human settlement larger than a village but smaller than a city. The size a settlement must be in order to be called a "town" varies considerably in different parts of the world, so that, for example, many American "small towns" seem to British people to be no more than villages, while...
  
  , city
  City
  A city is a relatively large and permanent settlement. Although there is no agreement on how a city is distinguished from a town within general English language meanings, many cities have a particular administrative, legal, or historical status based on local law.For example, in the U.S...
  
  
• State
• Nation
  Nation
  A nation may refer to a community of people who share a common language, culture, ethnicity, descent, and/or history. In this definition, a nation has no physical borders. However, it can also refer to people who share a common territory and government irrespective of their ethnic make-up...
  
  
• Society
  Society
  A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...
  
  
• Civilization
  Civilization
  Civilization is a sometimes controversial term that has been used in several related ways. Primarily, the term has been used to refer to the material and instrumental side of human cultures that are complex in terms of technology, science, and division of labor. Such civilizations are generally...
  
  

Quotes

"A "social unit" has (1) and identity of its own, separate from those of its members, (2) "recurrent and patterned" interactions, (3) members who identify themselves partly in terms of the unit..., (4) goals distinct from those of its members, (5) a division of labour, or differentiated goals attend to the goals. This is a pluralist definition, because autonomous entities that have properties or variables are simply assumed to exist. "Societies" are even defined as a "very large number" of social units with authority patterns (Eckstein and Gurr, 1975, P. 23). The problems of analyzing the relations at the societal level among the state, society, and economy, however conceived, are eliminated at one conceptuial stroke by the way the characteristics of social units are defined.

"A pluralist world view is therefore embedded in the fundamental conception of the unit of analysis and its properties. The view of bureaucracy emphasizes individual commitment to values and the common goals shared by all members of a hierarchical social unit"

Sociologist Margaret Archer

Margaret Archer

Margaret Archer is Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick, UK, since 1973. She is best known for coining the term elisionism in her 1995 book Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach....

 says "...it is perfectly conceivable that any social unit, from a community to a civilization, could be found the principle ideational elements (knowledge, belief, norms, language, mythology, etc.) of which do display considerable logical consistency -- that is, the components are consistent not contradictory -- yet the same social unit may be low on causal consensus."(2004:4)

It is plain that the vaster the social unit, the less possible is true democracy." Lanark

Lanark (book)

Lanark, subtitled A Life in Four Books, is the first novel of Scottish writer Alasdair Gray. Written over a period of almost thirty years, it combines realist and dystopian fantasy depictions of his home city of Glasgow....

, p.289 Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray is a Scottish writer and artist. His most acclaimed work is his first novel Lanark, published in 1981 and written over a period of almost 30 years...

NGL Hammond: "Epirus was a land of milk and animal products...The social unit was a small tribe, consisting of several nomadic or semi-nomadic groups, and these tribes, of which more than seventy names are known, coalesced into large tribal coalitions, three in number: Thesprotians, Molossians and Chaonians...We know from the discovery of inscriptions that these tribes were speaking the Greek language (in a West-Greek dialect)." (1994). Philip of Macedon. London, UK: Duckworth.

For Hanifan, social capital referred to:

"those tangible substances [that] count for most in the daily lives of people: namely good will, fellowship, sympathy, and social intercourse among the individuals and families who make up a social unit....The individual is helpless socially, if left to himself....If he comes into contact with his neighbor, and they with other neighbors, there will be an accumulation of social capital, which may immediately satisfy his social needs and which may bear a social potentiality sufficient to the substantial improvement of living conditions in the whole community. The community as a whole will benefit by the cooperation of all its parts, while the individual will find in his associations the advantages of the help, the sympathy, and the fellowship of his neighbors."