sociation

English

Noun

sociation (countable and uncountable, plural sociations)

1. (botany) A plant community.
   • 1930, Fifth International Botanical Congress, page 73:

     While the lowest units of phytocoenoses, the sociations, are founded upon a relative homogeneity in all layers, most consociations are homogeneous only in one layer, and the higher units in no layer at all, being founded mainly upon the sociological affinity of the dominants of the layer arbitrarily chosen as the base for the classification (most of the highest of the layers represented).

   • 1980, Selected Water Resources Abstracts:

     In the classification, sociations are first distinguished by the dominant or constant species, or by a combination of them.

2. (ecology) The stable interactions and influences among the species within a coenose.
   • 1975, Steindór Steindórsson frá Hlöðum, Studies on the mire-vegetation of Iceland, page 99:

     But as I chose to classify sociations, or rather associations in topographical terms, it was obviously necessary to separate the C. Bigelowii myri from the dry-ground sociations in which it is a dominant species.

   • 2013, Peter D. Moore, European Mires, →ISBN, page 124:

     Therefore a comparative analysis and a classification of bog plant communities must be undertaken on the basis of sociations.

3. (sociology) Interactions and relationships among people.
   • 2000, Barbara Adam, Ulrich Beck, Joost Van Loon, The Risk Society and Beyond: Critical Issues for Social Theory, →ISBN, page 47:

     Risk cultures lie in non-institutional and anti-institutional sociations.

   • 2010, Alex Law -, Key Concepts in Classical Social Theory, →ISBN:

     Sociation is neither the cause nor the consequence of society; it is society.

   • 2013, Stefan Jonsson, Crowds and Democracy, →ISBN:

     Basically, this entailed the formal study of human interaction, including the ways in which this interaction generates institutions, hierarchies, and structures of subjectivity, in a word, various forms of sociation.

   • 2018, Gregor Fitzi, The Challenge of Modernity: Simmel’s Sociological Theory, →ISBN:

     However, all of them – from the simplest to the most meticulously regulated forms of social interaction – can be assessed as modalities of sociation.