Main Social Transformations
The Feudal Economy was rural, land was used for agricultural purposes, and there was complete absence of towns and town life. Economic activity was mainly concerned with the production of the basic means for survival, food supply, clothing, elementary furniture etc.  The social and political unit was the estate, which was politically and legally autonomous and governed by the aristocratic class. The landholder was the legal and political leader, who, however, did not produce anything, but appropriated the products of their serfs. These essentially belonged to the landlord, politically and socially. They did not have any political or legal independence, but were subject to the orders and rules of the landlord.
The serfs were organised around the guild – system, based on the institution of the extended family, and teaching of skills and craft from generation to generation.
There was a complex system of obligations imposed upon the serf by the lord; the serf was obliged to surrender part of his production directly to the lord, i.e. without the mediation of money. Instead the serf held the rest of his production for the survival of himself and his family, in the estate.
The lord had the legal right to compel work, extra time – there was no fixed period work- time. The lord had the right to extract taxes, fees, duties or to impose extra charges. There was a strict hierarchical order in society, social distinctions and inequality was legalised. Aristocrats and clergy were socially superior to the rest of the population, who were mere servants, even slaves of the former.
However, the serf was the one who had the knowledge to produce. Moreover this production did not appear to the serf as a feature of modern fragmentation, as an aspect of alienation. For the serf produced the product from beginning to its final form. He possessed all the secrets of its production, and he retained part of it for his family.
The rise of modernity signifies a revolutionary shattering of the feudal order. The peasant producers challenge the authority of their lords. Estates and guilds collapse, land was freed from feudal bonds, peasants were removed from their estates, a vast mass of dispossessed peasants begins to now emerge. Violent struggle for the re-appropriation of land starts – movement of enclosure – Rousseau – rise of private property – exposed and dispossessed peasants.
Political Change in the Rise of Modernity
French Revolution – Declaration of Human Rights – Promises of Modernity
In July 1789, the castle of Bastille, at the outskirts of Paris, symbol of feudal domination, was occupied by armed peasants.
Declaration of Human Rights
• all people are born free and have equal - political and legal rights 
• abolition of serfdom and social hierarchy - resistance to oppression 
• freedom, equality and fraternity - the concept of citizenship emerges
• law and not the monarch expresses the common interest - but which is the common interest? Does there really exist such a common good?
• abolition of serfdom – all citizens are entitled to take all ecclesiastical, civil, and military posts, without social distinctions
• natural rights – freedom, property, equality
• Locke, political philosophy
Rise of the Modern National State
A specific territory, with fixed boundaries for exercising its political and legal power. National states.
Social Organisation
Weber`s distinctive features of modern western organisation, see Introduction in TheProtestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Reason becomes Rationality
• calculability – systematisation – methodical organisation of all aspects of social life