Introduction
Micro and macro
Social scientists often distinguish between different levels of social life: micro – the smallest scale, often meaning particular interactions between people; meso – an intermediate level referring to social organisations or institutions, or patterns of behaviour; and macro – the large-scale patterns, systems or structures of social life.
Governance
Governance concerns the action or manner of governing, the exercising of authority, or of being governed.
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In this chapter I will discuss social order as a central issue in social life and for the social sciences. In Section 1, I start by looking at how everyday life is ordered in many imperceptible ways, to set the context for presenting, in Section 2, two