Class at the Intersection

Overview

An intersectional approach to subaltern statuses that has class at its core is fundamental to the project. This strand investigates how class dynamics intersected with other forms of social hierarchy and exclusion, producing complex and differentiated experiences of subordination.

Class and Gender

We explore how class structured the experience of gender in ancient Greece:

• Differential, class-based notions of female respectability
• Strategies of distinction between poor and elite women
• The intersection of class and gender in work and public life
• How class shaped family structures and domestic arrangements

Class and Foreigners

This strand examines how class affected the treatment and experience of non-citizens:

• Differential treatment of foreigners and metics based on wealth
• How class affected security, access to social networks, and integration
• Rich Athenians and rich metics: class solidarity across citizen boundaries
• The intersection of ethnicity and class in Greek social hierarchies

Class and Slavery

A central focus is how class intersected with the institution of slavery:

• Similarities in conditions of labour between slaves and lower-class free
• Elite strategies of painting all manual labourers as “slavish”
• The free poor’s concern to mark their difference from slaves
• How this concern contributed to the domination of the slave population
• Slave, citizen, and metic artisans: class across status boundaries

Cross-Status Contacts

We investigate how interactions across status groups affected class identities:

• How cross-status contacts shaped class stereotypes
• The “slavish” citizen poor in elite literature
• Notions of autochthony and eugeneia in democratic ideology
• Social mobility and strategies of distinction within subaltern groups