What do you mean by "artificial construct"? Man is a social being, by nature. 99.9% of the world lives within some kind of society or civilization. True anarchy and savagery is aberrant and transient.
But not all civilizations are created equal. Some are better than others.
While I wouldn't want to be pedantic about words, "civilization" means living in cities. It differentiates nomadic people, or people who live in jungles from those people who settled down, built cities, established governments and agriculture and started building cultures that had longevity, permanence and made contributions to the future.
Civilization is very much an artificial construct. To describe just any ol' gathering of humans I would use the word "society".