Gary Wickham, Problems of Anti-State Sociology

AT LEAST TWICE IN THE PAST TWENTY-FOUR HOURS, it's a fair bet, anyone reading this has either heard or read the word 'society' and/or the word 'social'. These are very popular words. It's an equally good bet they would have heard them used to refer to a special domain, with a life of its own —"Australian society is obsessed with sport", "American society is racist", "Oh yeah, but you only think that because of social conditioning", and so on.