Class Social Structure Index
Hub
Class and social structure — the stratification of societies into groups distinguished by rank, occupation, wealth, descent, or legal status — is one of the foundational subjects of social history. The subdomain covers class and social structure as a research domain across every era and civilisation: ancient Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Indus Valley urban hierarchies; the Greek polis with its citizens, metics, and slaves; the Roman ordines (senators, equites, plebs) and the libertine-slave divide; the Indian varna and jati system; the four-class Confucian taxonomy (scholar-official, peasant, artisan, merchant) and its long East Asian career; the Sasanian Persian and Byzantine aristocratic-military gradations; Islamic ashraf, ulema, peasant, and slave hierarchies; the medieval European tripartite estates (those who pray, fight, work) and the urban-commune challenge to it; the early-modern emergence of court society and the bourgeoisie; the eighteenth-century gentry-dominated Atlantic world (whose Royal Navy gentility-and-meritocracy combination the current vault focus visits in detail); the nineteenth-century class system Marx and Weber theorised; twentieth-century mass society, welfare-state expansion, and the long shifts in race, gender, and class as overlapping categories of stratification; and the contemporary debates over inequality, precarity, and the long tail of social hierarchy. Notes treat groups, mobility, social reproduction, intersectionality, and the lived experience of stratification. Adjacent to MOC_Culture_Society, MOC_Politics_Governance, MOC_Economics_Commerce, and MOC_Religion_Church.
Primary Notes
(empty — populated as content is added)
Roadmap
(planned notes as red-links — add as research identifies gaps)
Methodology
- Class as a Concept — Marx, Weber, and the Long Debate
- Intersectionality — Race, Gender, Class as Overlapping Categories
- Social Mobility — Measuring Movement Between Strata Across History
Ancient
- Mesopotamian Urban Hierarchies — Awilum, Mushkenum, Wardum
- Egyptian Pharaonic Society — Priests, Scribes, Artisans, Peasants
- The Greek Polis — Citizens, Metics, Slaves, and the Boundaries of Belonging
- Roman Ordines — Senators, Equites, Plebs, and the Slave-Libertine Continuum
- The Indian Varna and Jati System — Origins and the Long Career of Caste
- Han Chinese Society — Confucian Four-Class Taxonomy and Its Reality
Medieval
- European Tripartite Estates — Those Who Pray, Fight, Work
- Byzantine and Sasanian Aristocratic-Military Stratification
- Islamic Society — Ashraf, Ulema, Peasants, and Slave Hierarchies
- Tang-Song Chinese Gentry and the Examination Aristocracy
- Medieval Japanese Buke, Kuge, and the Pre-Tokugawa Hierarchy
Early Modern
- European Court Society — Elias and the Civilising Process
- The Rise of the Bourgeoisie in Early Modern Cities
- Tokugawa Four-Class System — Samurai, Peasant, Artisan, Merchant
- Iberian Casta System — Race, Empire, and the Americas
- Ottoman Askeri and Reaya — Ruling Class vs Tax-Payers
Age of Sail (current vault focus)
- Officer Origins — Gentry, Patronage Networks, and Social Mobility in the Navy
- The Pressed Man — Social Profile, Resistance, and Integration into the Fleet
- Warrant Officers — Masters, Surgeons, Carpenters as the Technical Middle Class
- Greenwich Hospital Pensioners — Old Age, Poverty, and the Naval Welfare State
- Black Sailors in the Royal Navy — Presence, Roles, and Historical Invisibility
Modern
- Industrial Class Formation — Working Class, Bourgeoisie, and Marxist Categories
- The Long Shift in Race as a Category of Social Stratification
- Gender as Social Structure — From Patriarchy to Twentieth-Century Reformulations
- Welfare-State Settlements — Twentieth-Century Reductions in Inequality
- Contemporary Inequality — Piketty, Precarity, and Twenty-First-Century Stratification
Cross-Cutting
- See also: MOC_Culture_Society
- See also: _Home