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Definition: bourgeoisie from The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide

The social class above the workers and peasants, and below the nobility; the middle class. ‘Bourgeoisie’ (and bourgeois) has also acquired a contemptuous sense, implying commonplace, philistine respectability. By socialists it is applied to the whole propertied class, as distinct from the proletariat.


bourgeoisie

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
(bʊrzhwäzē'), originally the name for the inhabitants of walled towns in medieval France; as artisans and craftsmen, the bourgeoisie occupied a socioeconomic position between the peasants and the landlords in the countryside. The term was extended to include the middle class of France and subsequently of other nations. The word bourgeois has also long been used to imply an outlook associated with materialism, narrowness, and lack of culture—these characteristics were early satirized by Molière and have continued to be a subject of literary analysis. The bourgeoisie as a historical phenomenon did not begin to emerge until the development of medieval cities as centers for trade and commerce in Central and Western Europe, beginning in the 11th cent. The bourgeoisie, or merchants and artisans, began to organize themselves into corporations as a result of their conflict with the landed proprietors. At the end of the Middle Ages, under the early national monarchies in Western Europe, the…
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Full text Article Bourgeoisie

From World of Sociology, Gale
Bourgeoisie is a word of French origin denoting the business or middle class of a society . The term was originally used in medieval France to refer to the residents of walled towns, who were artisans and craftspeople located socially between the rural landlords and the peasants. This class was…
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Full text Article bourgeoisie

From The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology
This term is used loosely to describe either the middle or ruling classes in capitalist society. Both classes are assumed to have an interest in preserving capitalism in a struggle with the working class over the distribution of SURPLUS VALUE . It has become somewhat outdated with changes in the…
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Full text Article Bourgeoisie

From Encyclopedia of World Trade: From Ancient Times to the Present Full text Article A-Z Entries
Term originally used in reference to the class of self-employed free citizens in medieval European towns. The emergence of the bourgeoisie as a class coincided with the reappearance of an exchange economy in medieval Europe. As capitalism and technology advanced, the word began to take on new…
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Full text Article bourgeoisie

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
In social and political theory, the social order dominated by the property-owning class. The term arose in medieval France, where it denoted the inhabitant of a walled town. The concept of the bourgeoisie is most closely associated with Karl Marx and those who were influenced by him. According to…
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Full text Article bourgeoisie

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
(bʊrzhwäzē'), originally the name for the inhabitants of walled towns in medieval France; as artisans and craftsmen, the bourgeoisie occupied a socioeconomic position between the peasants and the landlords in the countryside. The term was extended to include the middle class of France and…
| 504 words
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the class of small capitalist business owners. Some theorists also include self-employed artisans, middle and small peasantry and other smallholding farmers. The term has its origins in MARX's work. He distinguished between the social and economic situation of big and small businesses and argued…
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Full text Article petite bourgeoisie

From The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology
A term used rather loosely to designate a CLASS of persons on the fringes of both the middle class and the working class who may own productive property but whose income is fairly low and whose conditions of work are relatively poor. For example, peasants and small farmers own land, shopkeepers and…
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Full text Article bourgeois/bourgeoisie

From Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Political Thought
French: town-dweller, and the class thereof. The term bourgeois has two uses which have been conflated for reasons that are self-evident. 1 . As appropriated by Marx , the term denotes a particular economic position, and the class created by that position, viz. the class of property-owners under…
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Full text Article bourgeoisie

From The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Houghton Mifflin
In general, the middle class . Applied to the Middle Ages , it refers to townspeople, who were neither nobles nor peasants . In Marxism it refers to those who control the means of production and do not live directly by the sale of their labor. Karl Marx distinguished between the “haute” (high) …
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Full text Article bourgeoisie

From Collins Dictionary of Sociology
( MARXISM ) in capitalist societies, the social class comprising owners of capital. Thus, CAPITALIST is primarily an economic category and bourgeoisie a social one. Non-Marxist sociological approaches to SOCIAL STRATIFICATION tend not to use the term, not least because the debates around the…
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