Publisher's Synopsis
This book evaluates the notions of orders and class not simply by conceptual analysis but by examining their application to the societies of eastern and western europe in the period 1500 onwards. Its aim is to study the following basic groups: nobility, clergy, middle classes, peasantry, proletariat and the poor. Its approach is interdisciplinary, a marriage of social history and historical sociology. A blending of the conceptual and the real, it results from historians and sociologists taking note of the other's discipline. Some of the studies are confined to individual societies; others are broadly comparative. As well as testing usefulness of the terms orders and class, the book aims to present reappraisals of social structures, relationships and developments in the light of recent historical research.
