Open Directory's Society section covers the areas of human interaction and people's thoughts, speculations, and aspirations about the world they live in.
This category covers topics directly about people, such as People, Ethnicity, Genealogy, and Disabled. And it covers experiences inherent to being human, in Sexuality, Death, Transgendered, Subcultures, Lifestyle Choices, and Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual. Society covers people's relationships with each other in topics such as Relationships, Activism, Advice, Crime, Support Groups, Work, Military, Politics, Issues, Law, Government, and Organizations. It covers people's perceptions and understandings of the universe they live in, in Philosophy, Paranormal, Urban Legends, and Religion and Spirituality. And it covers people's relationship to time, in topics such as History, Future, and Holidays.

Several other major Open Directory sections have categories related to Society. For example, categories about people who are important to society principally because of their contributions to science, the arts, sports, or local areas are located in Science, Arts, Sports, and Regional, respectively. Subjects related to the family are in Home/Family. The relationship between science and society is covered in Science/Science_in_Society. The Arts and Humanities, which are an important expression of society, have their own categories. News about society is in News. Many socially relevant reference materials about society can be found in Reference, such as Reference/Museums/Cultural, Reference/Archives, and Reference/Education.