Social hierarchies Notes

How Do Social Hierarchies Organize Power, Roles, and Resources?

1. Hierarchies exist in many settings, from families and schools to empires and modern corporations.
2. They can make coordination easier, but they can also restrict individual freedom and create injustice.

How Do Social Needs and Group Stability Explain Why Hierarchies Form?

1. One way to understand why groups create hierarchy is to think about human motivation.
2. Psychologist Abraham Maslow proposed a hierarchy of needs:
   1. physiological needs (food, water, rest), safety, belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.
   2. In social groups, people cooperate to meet these needs, and cooperation often requires leadership, shared expectations, and a division of tasks.
3. Early communities could improve survival by hunting together, sharing food, and protecting one another.
4. Over time, many groups developed norms and institutions that managed or controlled members' behaviour to keep the group stable and functional.
5. Hierarchies can be seen as one possible outcome of two pressures:
   1. Coordination problems (someone must organize labour, settle disputes, and plan for the group).
   2. Stability needs (the group creates rules and sanctions so members follow shared expectations).

Why Does Population Density and Technology Increase Social Complexity?

1. Sociologist Emile Durkheim argued that social groups change as population density increases and as technology changes communication.
   1. When more people live closer together and interact more often, the intensity and frequency of interaction increases.
   2. Small groups (for example, ancient nomadic communities) tend to be closely knit, with members sharing cultural practices and similar ways of life.
2. In such groups, hierarchy may be less formal, and participation can be more direct because people know one another well.
3. As groups become larger and more complex, they often develop:
   1. More specialized roles (leaders, soldiers, priests, administrators, traders)
   2. More formal institutions (laws, taxation, courts, bureaucracies)
   3. More enduring inequalities (hereditary titles, ownership rights, restricted mobility)

In What Ways Does Hierarchy Shape Participation by Defining Roles, Rights, and Expectations?

1. A hierarchy is not only a "ladder of prestige". It is also a system that structures participation.
2. It answers questions like:
   1. Who can make decisions?
   2. Who must obey?
   3. Who has access to education or skilled work?
   4. Who is protected by the law, and who is punished?
3. In many societies, people in higher ranks have greater rights, voice, and security, while lower ranks have greater exposure to risk and less control over their lives.
4. Hierarchies can also create a sense of identity and belonging.
   1. People may feel pride in their role, or they may resist it.
   2. Both reactions can be rational, depending on whether the hierarchy is experienced as legitimate and fair.

Why Do Economic Systems Commonly Produce Distinct Social Hierarchies?

1. In complex societies, resources must be allocated.
2. Different economic systems organize production and distribution in different ways, and these systems typically create different hierarchies.
3. A useful way to compare is to look at who controls key resources (land, labour, capital) and what legal status different groups have.

Slavery creates an extreme hierarchy f legal non-personhood

1. Slavery is an extreme form of hierarchy because it denies basic rights altogether.
2. It often targets particular groups, making hierarchy overlap with ethnicity, ancestry, or religion.

Feudalism ranks people by land ownership and hereditary status

1. Feudalism (common in Medieval Europe and also in parts of Russia and Japan) organized production mainly around agriculture and land ownership.
2. A monarch and a layer of hereditary landowners controlled large estates. Most people were peasants or serfs with few rights, tied to the land.
3. Because serfs could not easily leave and often lacked access to education, social mobility was limited.
4. Hierarchy was reinforced by tradition and law.

Capitalism often ranks people by ownership of capital and labor position

1. Capitalism can generate innovation and rising living standards, but it can also produce sharp inequalities in wealth and influence.
2. A classic argument is that markets coordinate production through individuals pursuing their self-interest (for example, producers supply what they can sell).
3. Critics argue that unequal starting points and bargaining power can lock in hierarchy.

Communism aims to reduce class heirarchy, with mixed historical outcomes

1. Communism is an economic and political idea that aims to reduce or eliminate class hierarchy by placing major resources under collective ownership and distributing output more equally.
2. In practice, states that pursued communist systems often created new hierarchies, for example party leadership versus ordinary citizens.
3. Understanding communism in Individuals and Societies requires separating the ideal (greater equality) from implementation (how real institutions worked, including power concentration).

How Are Hierarchies Maintained Through Institutions and Social Control?

1. Even when hierarchies benefit some groups, they persist only if they are maintained.
2. Social groups develop mechanisms to manage behaviour so the group remains stable.
3. Common mechanisms include:
   1. Laws and policing (formal rules and punishments)
   2. Education and socialization (teaching norms about "proper" roles)
   3. Religion and ideology (beliefs that justify rank as natural or deserved)
   4. Economic dependence (needing wages, housing, or land to survive)
   5. Social approval and stigma (rewards for conformity, shame for deviance)

Do Hierarchies Change When Pressures and Ideas Change?

1. Yes, because hierarchies aren't fixed.
2. They change with:
   1. Demographic shifts (urbanization, migration, changing population density)
   2. Technological change (new communication and production methods)
   3. Economic change (industrialization, new markets, unemployment)
   4. Political struggle (revolutions, reform movements, labour organizing)
   5. Cultural change (new beliefs about equality and rights)
3. Durkheim's idea of increasing interaction through population density and technology helps explain why modern societies can reorganize rapidly.