does "society" exist?

Ah yes and "our language is the limit to our world" (can't remeber who exactly said that but I sense it to be correct) "Our eyeballs are sentences" - But does this consequently mean that our "realities" would have been different had we been taught a different language? Or what if we hadn't been taught a language at all? Would there be no limits? Stuff like this always gets me thinking.....

It boils down to meaning of the term "existence". My argument is that "existence" is about functionality within communication. as opposed to independent ontological status. (That is a very simplified summary of neopragmatism which holds "reality" to be negotiable). Trivially, insosfar the the word "society" is used in some aspects of communicative exchange, it is futile to argue for its "non-existence". If Thatcher may be merely be arguing that we cannot anthropomorphize "society" as having "a mind" etc...fine....but does not eliminate the use of the concept as a statistical factor in events.

When you say the meaning of the term of "existence" are you saying it comes down to whether you feel existence is a whole, or individual "existences"?(which WOULD make the idea of "reality" negotiable) When it comes to reality, I believe it is nothing more than an idea, a way of thinking. Now it just so happens to be that the VAST majority of existence have these ideas and therefore it is passed off as a sort of "thing" or said to "exist". The IDEA of a society is just that, an idea. That's not to say it's not useful to those individuals who like to believe in the concept from time to time for "social" purposes in social situations, but it certaintly doesn't exist outside of the mind.

Ontological status does not have to be operatively independent....actually I can´t see how it could.
Don´t get me wrong I see what you mean, but different functions in the same object don´t ad to its status, but rather reveal its status in its multiplicity, its operative potential which of course is from a dynamic point of view (along a time frame) relational on per se...

Ontological independence its then applied to the whole of the system in its Hard Deterministic instance including the true value of the entirety of its functions at any given frame of time, and along the whole chain of time/space...

...things or objects although with contingent functions given different possible interactions still sustain their validity in a Hard Deterministic background, if it is the case that Hard Determinism is true, which of course we don´t know...

...the "mind" also being such an entity, such that "exist outside the mind" is meaningless.

...would n´t you rather accept that "mind" is an epiphenomena which emerges out of a relational rule in the system ?

Again check this:

and this...

You understand.