"Natural Hierarchies"

Abstract

This essay examines the socioeconomics of status hierarchies: how they respond to external demands, and how, in terms of institutional structure, they make themselves socially usable and durable. It asks whether there are, in some sense, "natural hierarchies"-hierarchies that will almost always emerge in sophisticated societies, regardless of sociopolitical or economic conditions. It highlights adaptability as the central functional feature that makes status rankings durable, and employs this measure to identify two kinds of "natural hierarchies": wealth and seniority. Between the two, the former has drawn the lion's share of political and intellectual attention, but the latter possesses similar functional advantages, and is likely just as pervasive across human societies, historical and modern. Like wealth hierarchies, seniority hierarchies also serve as generally useful proxies for most attributes that societies commonly value, are also relatively easy to use, and avoid direct normative conflict with most sociopolitical value systems even more adeptly than wealth hierarchies do. The term "natural hierarchy" is employed here in a purely descriptive sense, without any normative connotations whatsoever.