Sociologists have defined a collectivity as a social system, as an aggregate of organisms,or as a definable social order wherein the members have a sense of membership.Collectivities comprise a central element of much modern sociological theory.
In terms of sociological categories, a community can seem like a sub-set of a social collectivity.In developmental views, a community can emerge out of a collectivity.
A community is a social unit (a group of people) with a shared socially-significant characteristic(s), being place, set of norms, culture, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, town, or neighborhood) or in virtual space through communication platforms. Durable good relations that extend beyond immediate genealogical ties also define a sense of community, important to people's identity, practice, and roles in social institutions such as family, home, work, government, society, or humanity at large. Although communities are usually small relative to personal social ties, "community" may also refer to large-group affiliations such as national communities, international communities, and virtual communities.
In terms of sociological categories, a community can seem like a sub-set of a social collectivity.In developmental views, a community can emerge out of a collectivity.
Macrosociology is a large-scale approach to sociology, emphasizing the analysis of social systems and populations at the structural level, often at a necessarily high level of theoretical abstraction. Though macrosociology does concern itself with individuals, families, and other constituent aspects of a society, it does so in relation to larger social system of which such elements form a part. The macrosociological approach can also analyze generalized collectivities (such as "the city" or "the church").
In contrast, microsociology focuses on the individual social agency. Macrosociology, however, deals with broad societal trends that can later be applied to smaller features of society, or vice versa. To differentiate, macrosociology deals with issues such as war as a whole; 'distress of Third-World countries'; poverty on a national/international level; and environmental deprivation, whereas microsociology analyses issues such as (for example) the individual features of war (e.g. camaraderie, one's pleasure in violence, etc.); the role of women in third-world countries; poverty's effect on "the family"; and how immigration impacts a country's environment.
Crowd psychology (or mob psychology) is a subfield of social psychology which examines how the psychology of a group of people differs from the psychology of any one person within the group. The study of crowd psychology looks into the actions and thought processes of both the individual members of the crowd and of the crowd as a collective social entity. The behavior of a crowd is much influenced by deindividuation (seen as a person's loss of responsibility) and by the person's impression of the universality of behavior, both of which conditions increase in magnitude with size of the crowd. Notable theorists in crowd psychology include Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931), Gabriel Tarde (1843-1904), and Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Many of these theories are today tested or used to simulate crowd behaviors in normal or emergency situations. One of the main focuses in these simulation works aims to prevent crowd crushes and stampedes.