ABSTRACT
Society is clear in two main senses: as the most general term for the body of institutions and relationships within which a relatively large group of people live; and as the most abstract term for the condition in which such institutions and relationships are formed. This concept of society, generalized and abstract as it is, was decisively established in the eighteenth century and gives rise to the equally generalized and abstract distinction between "individual" and "society" that became built in to the foundation of professional sociology in the nineteenth century. The basic approach is to identify the consequences, both positive and negative, which these phenomena have for the society as a whole. The underlying theoretical conception of society was functionalist. Criminal justice arrangements work to guarantee a ready supply of recycled candidates for society's appetite for necessary crime. In professional sociology's functionalist accounts, crime and deviance are said to be functional for some population, typically the whole society.
