Category: Civilization, History, and Anthropology

DEFINITIONS: HUMAN ORGANIZATIONS

Hamlet: a small settlement, generally one smaller than a village, usually a collection of homes in a rural or agrarian region.

Village: a group of houses and associated buildings, larger than a hamlet and smaller than a town, situated in a rural area, and possessing minor local commerce.

Town: an urban area that has a name, defined boundaries, and local government, and that is generally larger than a village and smaller than a city, with an economy primarily of agricultural, crafts, or light industry.

City: A large human settlement in a permanent and densely settled place with administratively defined boundaries whose members work primarily on non-agricultural tasks, and possessing a financial center for the organization of capital.

Quarter: a part of a town or city having a specific character or use.

*Ghetto(Aliens): a part of a city in which members of a minority group live, typically as a result of social, legal, or economic pressure.

*Enclave(Aliens): a portion of territory within or surrounded by a larger territory whose inhabitants are culturally or ethnically distinct.

*Colony(Alien): (a) a group of people of one nationality or ethnic group living in a foreign city or country. (b a country or area under the full or partial political control of another country, typically a distant one, and occupied by settlers from that country.)

Estate (Proto Plantation): an extensive area of land in the country, usually with a large house, owned by one person, family, or organization.

*Plantation (Proto Fief): a usually large farm or estate, especially in a tropical or semitropical country, on which cash crops, including cotton, tobacco, coffee, sugar cane, is cultivated, usually by resident laborers.

Manor: (especially in England and Wales) a unit of land, originally a feudal lordship, consisting of a lord’s demesne and lands rented to tenants. (Today: a large country house with lands; the principal house of a landed estate.)

Fief(proto-state): an estate of land, especially one held on condition of feudal service.

Demesne (land): land attached to a manor and retained for the owner’s own use.

Protectorate (military): a state that is controlled and protected by another.

State(politics): a territory with an organized political community under one government.

Country (territory): A state, with a government, occupying a particular territory.

Nation(Ethnicity): a large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory.

Nation-State(Ethnicity): a sovereign state whose citizens or subjects are relatively homogeneous in factors such as language or common descent.

Federation(politics): a group of states with a central government but independence in internal affairs.

Confederation: a more or less permanent union of countries with some or most political power vested in a central authority.

League: a collection of people, countries, or groups that combine for a particular purpose, typically mutual protection or cooperation.

Empire(politics): an extensive group of states or countries under a single supreme authority, formerly especially an emperor or empress.

Civilization: the largest organization of humans with common race, ethnicity, history, culture, religion and often language.