Abstract
Since the middle of the nineteenth century, the nature and consequences of class have been important topics and subjects of debate in the social sciences. Different scholars have approached class in different ways and have used it to address different issues, though commonly they see class in terms of people's relationships to important economic resources. This entry describes that diversity by presenting some of the changing approaches to class as they have emerged since the 1960s, the decade that saw a boom in work on class, changes that echo more general intellectual changes in anthropology and the other social sciences.