Curated playlist
Social classes
- SlaveryOwnership of people as property
- Upper classThe upper class is a social category defined not just by wealth but by the power to pass that wealth across generations, intact, as though it were a birthright rather than an achievement. Across modern societies, the people who occupy this…
- Working classThe working class is a term that cuts differently depending on who is speaking. Karl Marx defined it as those who sell their labour power for wages and do not own the means of production. Socialists broaden it to include nearly everyone…
- Social classSocial class shapes the schools a person attends, the jobs open to them, when they retire, whom they may marry, and how police and the courts treat them. Yet ask a sociologist to define it and you will not get a clean answer. The term…
- Middle classThe middle class first appeared in print in James Bradshaw's 1745 pamphlet, a document about Irish wool smuggling, of all things. That tiny footnote of an origin story hints at something essential: the middle class has always been defined…
- PeasantPeasants have made up the majority of humanity for most of recorded history. One estimate puts the figure at 85 percent of the population in the Middle Ages. Yet the word itself carries a strange double life: at once the plain label for an…
- SerfdomSerfdom was a condition of debt bondage and indentured servitude that held many of Europe's peasants in place for centuries. A serf could not simply walk away. He placed his head in his lord's hands during a ceremony called bondage, and…
- NobilityNobility is a social class that has shaped the political, economic, and cultural life of societies across nearly every continent. It sits, almost universally, ranked just below royalty itself. The question at the heart of this documentary…
- Class discriminationClass discrimination, also called classism, decides who a hiring manager calls back before a word is spoken. In one study by Bertrand and Mullainathan, identical job applications went out to employers under different names that hinted at…
- Aristocracy (class)Aristocracy carries a meaning hidden in its Greek roots: aristokratia, a compound of aristos, meaning excellent, and kratos, meaning power. The word did not begin as a term for inherited wealth or lavish estates. It began on the…