Social Hierarchy

[originally posted on my teaching blog, History Survey, on 5/28/2007]

While all of us have certain things in common, the place each of us holds in our society's pecking order shapes our experience in fundamental ways. The role of social hierarchy varies over time and place, but we must always take it into account when studying the past.

To discuss this topic in the medieval and early modern periods, we use the terms "estates" and "orders." We usually reserve the term "class" for the modern era, although sometimes we use it as a generic term in reference to social hierarchy. In medieval and early modern Europe, a man's estate or order depended on his legal position in society, which derived from---and helped to determine---his functional or occupational role. A woman, on the other hand, tended to derive her status from her husband (assuming she married, which was the norm, if often not the reality). Class came about after Europeans stopped making legal distinctions based on birth and a man's place in the social hierarchy derived from a combination of his wealth, education, and occupation. Here too, a woman's class tended to stem from her husband's, although that has been changing, especially in the last several decades as many women have developed their own professional identities.