• like sedimentary strata/layers

• everyone is not equal

status, hierarchy, class, rank, caste, prestige, power, influence, control, authority, superordination/ subordination/submission, wealth, affluence, slavery, serfdom, etc.

• basic underlying dimension of dominance

1) top stratum = oligarchy [coalition] of males; dominance struggles primarily among males

• males dominate females

3) dominants enjoy privileges re mating & resources

4) dominance maintained through: aggressive displays, courting subordinates, other types of coercion and deception

5) dominance orders tend to be stable (although mobility exists)

6) higher dominance positions take adults several years to attain

• gerontocracy is consistent pattern - old dominate young

8) competition for dominance increases when competition for resources intensifies

9) roles dominants play:

• lead defense of group

• direct group movements and activities

• maintain order within group (to secure position)

• dominants less likely to reciprocate various types of assistance

• dominants cheat

"Everywhere the tendency has been toward a division between those, always a minority, who have appropriated the richest supplies and those, always a majority, who must make do with the remainder, often the bare minimum needed for survival" (Lopreato & Crippen, 1999)

"It is a law of nature, common to all mankind, which time shall neither annul nor destroy, that those who have greater strength and power shall bear rule over those who have less." - Dionysius

Why the struggle for dominance?

• resources needed to promote survival and reproduction

• higher status associated with greater health

• higher status associated with greater reproductive success in humans
• modern exception due to contraception, but higher status men have more sex partners than lower status men

• We are all the descendants of kings and queens, chiefs and lords!

(ambition, competitiveness, political savvy, identifying with powerful, need for power/control/glory/prestige, instinct to dominate, greed, etc.)

deception also adaptive - propels us to seek selfish ends and convince others to help us, cloaking actions in "collective interest"
 

Dominance just isn't a man's game:

• women’s mating preferences (Buss)

• women desire high status males or males with good potential for high status

• example of sexual selection

• better prospects for helping to provide for children

• doesn't have to be women's goal - just executing adaptation

"If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning." - Aristotle Onassis

"I don't know a single head of state who hasn't yielded to some kind of carnal temptation, small or large.  That in itself is reason to govern." - Francois Mitterand, 1998
 

Development of classes:

coalitions among individuals trying to climb hierarchy and/or maintain their
positions
 
 
 
 

Redistribution of wealth as equalizer?

• occurs in all societies

• never eliminates inequality

• often tool for some individuals/ coalitions to climb hierarchy through indebtedness or solidify coalition

• e.g., Demos & Republicans, and their respective clients

• e.g., Saddam Hussein's loyalists prospering under sanctions despite widespread poverty in Iraq

poverty is relative across time and societies
 

Interventions

• can be no effective social engineering without a good social physics

• Marxist theory

• development of classes and communism
• class = individuals w/ same relations to means of production (how people make a living [labor, land, capital]
•  class consciousness = sense of common fate, awareness of how the system is organized

• class consciousness among workers develops, then revolution (taking power away from capitalists)

• implement "dictatorship of the proletariat" on this principle:

 

 

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." - Karl Marx

Lenski article
 

• revolutions occurred; not exactly how Marx envisioned

• Marxist revolutions led by higher status, educated people not in power (e.g., Lenin, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, Mao Zedong, et al.)

• used communist rhetoric & promises of redistribution of wealth to lower strata to build coalitions

points for discussion:
 

• Marxist experiments = experiments in a research design sense?

• How well did communist societies achieve Marxist goals?

• How did communist rulers secure their dominant positions?

• How successful were Marxist societies in changing status striving?

Milovan Djilas (1957), Yugoslav comrade of Tito: "Everything happened differently in the USSR and other Communist countries from what the leaders …anticipated."
 

Vilifredo Pareto: history is “a graveyard of aristocracies”

The Who: “Meet the new boss, the same as the old boss”

French saying: “The more it changes, the more it remains the same”
 
 

Small-scale attempts to eliminate inequality: Israeli kibbutzim
 

• small, independent, mostly self-sufficient collectives based on principle of equality and shared decision making

• formed by individuals who wanted to be part of a kibbutz

• record of achievements (Rosenfeld)

• relatively little economic inequality

• yet two main classes - management and labor

• dominants (white collar) treated deferentially

• dominants have access to special privileges

• subordinates clamor for more material rewards and less work

• dominants call for more self-sacrifice

• status inherited

• high status persons desired as mates

points for discussion:
 

• reluctance of traditional banks to lend to poor people

• banker's paradox

• how does the Grameen bank resemble other strategies primates use to climb in status?

• eligibility for membership

• Grameen bank as a factor in reducing poverty - methodological/design issues

• future of the Grameen bank

• dominance structures always present despite interventions

• given status-striving adaptations, may be impossible to eliminate inequality