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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social institutions
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Human Hierarchies - A General Theory (Paperback)
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Human Hierarchies - A General Theory (Paperback)
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Human beings are hierarchical animals. Always and everywhere,
people have developed social ranking systems. These differ
dramatically in how they are organized, but the underlying causal
mechanisms that create and sustain them are the same. Whether they
are on the top or bottom of the heap, people attempt to be superior
to some other persons or group. This is the root of Melvyn L.
Fein's thesis presented in Human Hierarchies: A General Theory.
Fein traces the development of changes from hunter-gatherer times
to our own techno-commercial society. In moving from small to large
communities, humans went from face-to-face contests for superiority
to more anonymous and symbolic ones. Societies evolved from hunting
bands where the parties knew each other through big-men societies,
chieftainships, agrarian empires, patronage chains, caste
societies, estate systems, and market-oriented democracies. Where
once small groupings were organized primarily by strong forces such
as personal relationships, the now standard large groupings are
more dependent on weaker forces such as those provided by social
roles. Bureaucracies and professional roles have become prominent.
Bureaucracies allow large-scale organizations to maintain control
of people by limiting the potential destructiveness of unregulated
tests of strength and by clarifying chains of command. Their
rigidity and unresponsiveness requires that they be supplemented by
professional roles. At the same time, a proliferation of
self-motivated experts delegate authority downward, thereby
introducing a more flexible decentralization. This analysis is a
unique and significant advance in both the sociology and
anthropology of stratification among humans.
General
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