Human Hierarchies

A General Theory

Melvyn L. Fein

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351514385
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Antropología

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.

1

Hierarchy and Science

Causal Mechanisms

During the 1950s high school science teachers often reported a strange anomaly to their students. When introducing them to the earth sciences, they noted an unusual configuration of the continents. With wry amusement it was noted that if one took a scissor and cut a map along the borders of South America and Africa, the two could be fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. It was as if they had once been part of the same landmass. The more scientifically literate instructors might then refer to the esoteric speculations of Alfred Wegener. A German meteorologist, Wegener had in 1912 proposed the existence of continental drift. According to his calculations, the continents had once been joined in a single supercontinent he dubbed Pangaea. Since then, over the course of many millions of years, the original assemblage had been torn asunder, with the constituent parts subsequently wandering into their present positions. Indeed, Wegner believed that this drift could be used to explain the rise and fall of mountain ranges. He proposed that when these huge lithic agglomerations collided with one another, the astounding force of the contact thrust the impact zone upward.

Of course, all of these conjectures were regarded as idle daydreams. Every right thinking scientific investigator knew that the continents could not move. A solid consensus agreed that Africa and South America were too large and heavy to float across an expanse of basaltic rock as Wegener suggested. Even if the seafloor were plastic, the mere bulk of the continents would hold them firmly in place. Wegener produced massive volumes of data demonstrating that the rock formations on both sides of the Atlantic seemed to match, but this made little difference. It might look as if the strata on the coast of Brazil and those on the Gulf of Guinea were once contiguous, yet this was impossible. Geologists agreed that there was no way they could have been connected. Even when Wegener produced evidence of what looked like drag marks in the middle of the Indian Ocean, they refused to accept his hypothesis that the Indian subcontinent floated up from Africa to crash into Asia. While it was appealing to contemplate the effects of an enormous collision that could have raised the Himalayas to their current height, there was no conceivable means whereby this occurred. There was obviously no causal mechanism with sufficient power to propel the scenario forward. Continental drift was at best a mental construct.

Almost a half-century later, all this was to change. British geophysicists made the striking discovery that the earth’s magnetic field periodically reversed. What had been the magnetic South Pole became the north and vice versa, then after a period of time, this order was again inverted. As importantly, it was also discovered that these polarities were imprinted in the rocks that formed during specific intervals. The molecules of which they were composed aligned differently depending upon which way the poles were lined up. Soon afterward deep-sea explorations revealed candy-striped configurations of alternately magnetized rocks. Newly developed ultradeep submersibles also brought forth evidence of parallel patterns of igneous rock neatly flanking the mid-Atlantic ridge. The presence of the ridge had long been known, but it now became evident that it was a place where magma gradually seeped up to produce seamounts. The magnetic stripes flanking it were apparently caused by the magnetic polarity that existed when a particular seam of rock emerged. Their orderly sequencing was thus dramatic substantiation that the seafloor was spreading. The Atlantic Ocean was literally growing larger as cooling magma added to its dimensions. But if this were true, then the continents bordering the ocean must also have moved apart. They too had spread as the material between them expanded. This likewise implied that the distance between the continents must once have been quite small. Indeed, they may have been in contact.

Thus was born the theory of plate tectonics. Further research showed that the earth’s crust was divided into a patchwork of stony plates that were in constant motion. These apparently grew along their ridges where liquid materials from the planet’s mantle rose. Meanwhile, they maintained their general size as their opposite edges plunged back into the depths along the abysmal trenches that lined the deep ocean. The movement thereby created was calibrated in inches, but it was measurable, and over the course of millions of years resulted in thousands of miles of change. Here was a revolution in scientific thought. This was a paradigmatic shift that suddenly refocused geological explanations. Continental drift did exist and explained a multitude of phenomena ranging from the geometry of mountain formations to the location of the geysers in Yellowstone Park. Wegener had been vindicated. His much-maligned theories had a basis in fact after all. The difference was that his speculations were now grounded in a verifiable causal mechanism. Scientists could finally understand how the continents moved. These masses of material did not have to float over resistant oceanic rocks. An entirely new physical arrangement had now been revealed that enabled them to alter position without violating physical laws. This new theory proposed that the continents were firmly grounded in a substrate, but that this substrate moved. What once seemed fantastic was obviously doable. The architecture of the earth was itself the agent of change.

Philosophers of science have frequently described knowledge as expanding by hypothesizing natural laws that are subsequently revised through experiment and observation. Social scientists, in recent years, have likewise emphasized the priority of statistical correlations between measurable variables as producing fresh insights into human interactions. They assert that our knowledge of social events is thus pushed forward by discovering patterns of association that mirror an underlying causal etiology. What is left out of this portrait, however, is the priority of causal mechanisms. Before science can quantify natural phenomena, it must first offer a plausible means whereby particular events occur. It must ask how things happen before it calculates how speedily they occur. With respect to continental drift, the gradual separation of immense landmasses could not be understood, nor be measured with respect to this movement, before plate tectonics explained the nature of this phenomenon. Science is not so much about correlations of variables as about how these variables are connected. Unless it can produce a reasonable account of this, it cannot begin to offer a persuasive account of what is happening—or why. The priority of the plausible causal mechanism is evident not only in geology, but also in biology. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, speculations about biological evolution were all the rage. One of those who believed that individual species must gradually transmute from one into another was Erasmus Darwin. Like many of his contemporaries, he was impressed with the physiological similarities between ostensibly different creatures that had lately been revealed by anatomical researchers. The wings of bats, for instance, were, in terms of their bone structure, clearly configured much like the human hand. Then there was the matter of geological evolution. Gradualists, such as Hutton, made a strong case that volcanoes and river valleys had been shaped by eons of small alterations. As streams washed down from the mountains, they gradually eroded the channels through which they passed, ultimately scouring out deep gorges. These changes might be imperceptible, but over the long haul dramatically altered the face of the planet. Added to this were the many discoveries of fossilized animals and plants. It was becoming increasingly transparent that a large proportion of these were no longer represented among the earth’s living creatures. All in all, biological change seemed to be firmly established. The significant question was this: How could this happen? How could one creature give rise to a very different sort of creature when it was obvious that animals and plants reproduced offspring like themselves?

One of the most influential of the then current theories of evolution was that of Jean Baptiste Lamarck. A professor of zoology at the French Museum of Natural History, he suggested that animals mutated by passing along acquired characteristics. Individual changes made in the parents’ morphology would be inherited by their offspring. Thus an antelope that stretched its neck to reach the leaves on higher tree branches would produce offspring with longer necks. If this process continued long enough, the result would be a giraffe. The problem with this hypothesis was that it contradicted accessible observations. Men who pumped iron to increase their muscle mass did not necessarily sire well-endowed sons. Moreover, didn’t the Bible inform us that God created the species that populated the firmament? Wasn’t a theory of evolution therefore an act of impiety? Many educated persons agreed with this assessment and soon found a champion in Georges Cuvier. A celebrated anatomist, Cuvier propounded a theory of catastrophism. More aware than most of the progression of creatures in the geological record, he argued that this was caused by a series of geological calamities. Events, such a Noah’s flood, periodically wiped out vast swaths of flora and fauna, thereby clearing the stage for new creations. God was very much in charge of Cuvier’s universe. Any appearance of evolution was merely that, an appearance.

A broadly accepted theory of evolution could not occur until this obstacle was overcome. Unless science could produce a plausible mechanism of biological change, few would acknowledge its reality. Not until after mid-century did this occur. It was only then, after two decades of gestation, that Charles Darwin found the courage to announce a controversial hypothesis. The grandson of Erasmus, he would suggest a causal mechanism that took the intellectual community by storm. Stimulated by his observations on the five-year circum-navigational voyage of the HMS Beagle, and further inspired by the demographic ponderings of Thomas Malthus, he, in 1859, produced his masterwork, The Origin of Species. In this bestseller, he argued that species mutated into new forms through a process of natural selection. Creatures in competition for continued existence produced offspring with a differential propensity for survival. Since there was a natural variation within populations, those individuals best suited to prevail did so. In time, the persistence of the fittest would shift their morphology in one direction rather than another. As on the Galapagos Islands, finches with the beaks best suited to exploit the available foods would become dominant. Unlike their ancestors, some would be characterized by stout beaks for crushing hard seeds, while others developed narrower beaks for eating insects. They would thus appear to be distinctly new creations.

Darwin’s theory had the advantage of relying on a mechanism that could be seen in daily operation. The British gentry had long been breeding horses to produce the fleetest steeds. They bought and mated stallions and mares with desirable characteristics in the hopes of producing foals with more desirable characteristics. They also engaged in artificial selection to create new breeds of dogs and pigeons. Clearly, what Darwin said did happen could happen. New sorts of animals could be bred from existing populations. His defense of evolution was persuasive precisely because he provided a plausible method for change. Darwin did not cite a mere correlation of variables. In a sense, this association had long been available in the form of comparative anatomy. What he added was a causal bridge. It was his ability to visualize how a competition for survival could make a difference. It was this that placed evolution in context and provided other scientists with the insights into what must be investigated to validate his hypotheses.

If any additional confirmation of the centrality of causal mechanisms to science is necessary, it is provided by physics. Isaac Newton, even in his own day, was heralded as a genius. His theories of gravity then were cited as the epitome of scientific progress. Their mathematical precision, in formulating laws of nature, was regarded as the embodiment ment of naturalistic rigor. So exact were these formulae that they are still employed to calculate the trajectories of earth orbiting satellites. Yet Newton’s numbers would not have made sense without a fundamental alteration in the way physical relationships were conceived. Building upon the contributions of Copernicus and Galileo, Newton sought to explain the motions of heavenly bodies. But he went further. He sought to connect what happened on earth with what occurred in the skies. In order to achieve this, however, he had to reformulate the variables involved. Where his predecessors had thought in terms of celestial spheres and the natural positions of physical objects, he introduced the notions of force and mass. Although this may today seem obvious, in his day it was an intellectual breakthrough. It literally remade the building blocks of the universe.

What has nowadays been forgotten is the kind of causal mechanisms medieval scholars took for granted. As they gazed up into the heavens, they could not imagine how the stars could remain suspended if they were not held in place by something solid. Since they could not see this something, they hypothesized crystalline globes to which the stars and planets were attached. These were thought both appropriately tangible and suitably invisible. Back down on the ground, academics were confronted with another conundrum that required an explanation. Why, they asked, did some objects fall, whereas others rose. Following Aristotle, they concluded that corporeal entities were merely seeking their natural place in the scheme of things. The essence of some was to be heavy and therefore lower down, whereas others were light and inclined to move higher. It all seemed so simple. Reality was imbued with a God-given order that physical objects innately sought to replicate.

Newton’s universal law of gravity, which states that the force between any two bodies is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the distance between them, would have been nonsensical in an Aristotelian universe. In Aristotle’s world, objects moved in straight lines and at a constant speed according to their weight. Planetary orbits deflected into ellipses because they responded to gravitational pulls were thus beyond the ken of Greek or medieval thinking. Aristotle did not calculate in terms of forces and masses. As a consequence, he could not have imagined Newton’s laws of motion. Even something as apparently simple as inertia did not fit into his scheme. The upshot was that his cosmos was not the clockwork universe of his successor. Yet the difference between the two was the causal mechanisms they postulated. A dramatic alteration in the perception of how events are connected utterly changed what constituted a valid explanation of reality. Identifying physical objects as possessing constant quantities of mass, set in motion by measurable impulses of energy, enabled scientists to produce mathematical equations connecting these phenomena. Aristotelian essences were not similarly measurable. Nor did they lend themselves to an explanation of how stellar objects stayed aloft without the aid of tangible supports. Without the notion of a force of gravity, no other sort of account seemed sensible.

The Moralistic Imperative

Having read this far, the reader is perhaps confused as to what this book is all about. As its title conveys, this book is not about geology, evolution, or geophysics. Rather it is an effort to understand the nature of human hierarchies. The point in beginning with an exegesis of the role of causal mechanisms in establishing science is to contrast this with the less empirical strategies sociology has employed in explaining human ranking systems. Indeed, the first question that any science must answer is this: What is it trying to understand? What phenomena is it seeking to elucidate? Remarkably, sociology has misconceived the way it has approached what it once called social stratification. The dis-cipline’s current condition is more akin to Aristotelian naturalism than Newtonian physics, Darwinian evolution, or plate tectonics. Instead of seeking an observationally grounded causal mechanism to clarify disparities in social status, it has taken refuge in conceptions more reminiscent of Aristotelian essences. What it has sought to explicate is why particular people are more powerful than others, not why and how people participate in ranking systems. Instead of exploring the reasons human beings are hierarchical creatures, it has concentrated on evaluating the validity of specific hierarchies. Unfortunately, this has a moralistic quality comparable to the ancient belief that objects sought their “natural” places in the universe. It, in essence, asserts that some ranking systems are more valid than others. In this, sociology has not yet found building blocks analogous to Newtonian mass and force, Darwinian natural selection, or plate tectonics. This has left it ill prepared to engage in a scientific investigation that results in a cumulative expansion of data-based knowledge. Indeed, in its current stage of development, at least with respect to the nature of human hierarchies, it is trapped in a morality play suffused with exhortation and self-righteousness.

Where things presently stand is on blatant display in the flagship journal of reviews published by the American Sociological Association (ASA). Where once the opening subhead of Contemporary Sociology’s section on recent publications was labeled social hierarchies, it has since been relabeled inequalities. No doubt, many advocates of this transformation characterize it as a candid reflection of the association’s growing commitment to social justice. They portray such efforts as an honest attempt to deal with the issues confronting society. Rather than run away and hide from social exploitation, the organization has decided to stop sheltering behind a pusillanimous show of neutrality. Although he remains a sociological icon, Max Weber’s notion that science should pursue value neutrality is widely scoffed at. In fact, many social scientists argue that neutrality is not possible. Everyone, including scientists, is alleged to have a point of view that distorts how the world is apprehended. So why not admit this? And why not go further and embrace the implications of human bias? Would it then be possible to convert this from a negative to a positive? If the world is unequal—and it is—why not align oneself with the victims of inequality?

It is not too much to assert that a majority of contemporary sociologists are unabashed advocates of social justice. They believe that pursuing this end, rather than knowledge per se, is the ultimate purpose of a self-respecting science. What good, they ask, is knowledge if its stands on the sidelines while millions of innocents suffer? What is the point of never seeking to make the world a better place? This, indeed, is the conventional rational for replacing a concentration on social hierarchies with one on inequalities. In focusing on the latter, they wish to understand why some people are submerged so they can assist in alleviating their plight. Their goal is to understand how inequality is imposed so as to expunge it from society. As most would readily admit, they are dedicated to “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.” Merely studying social hierarchies as an intellectual exercise would be tantamount to accepting social injustice. It would be equivalent to admitting that this cannot be reversed.

To put the matter bluntly, many sociologists have become moralists rather than social scientists. They perceive themselves as change agents rather than detached investigators. More than this, they have become moralists with an identifiable agenda, which is to say, they have particular commitments they wish to promote. Most sociologists are adamant egalitarians. They crave a world in which everyone is on a par. From their perspective, inequality is immoral. It is an evil to be resisted and eliminated. As a result, their chief concern is not in understanding how inequalities are created, but in documenting their presence in specific instances. They wish to expose the evil so it can be attacked and destroyed. In this, they are also oriented toward understanding how social movements can be harnessed to deal with particular injustices. The idea is to discover the most effective means of instituting moral solutions. If this is so, then referring to their enterprise as science is erroneous. It is little more than an attempt to co-opt an honorific title.

So successful have the exertions of these moralists been that numerous publishing houses have joined the ASA in describing their wares as pertaining to inequality rather than social hierarchy or social stratification. This, to be sure, amounts to little more than advertising their products in the terms congenial to their customers. But something more serious, and more sinister, has resulted from the crusade to institutionalize the study of inequality. In recent years, college courses on “race, class, and gender” have proliferated. Authors, professors, department heads, and university administrators have assumed that these subjects deserve to be taught together. They argue that what they have in common is that all of them deal with inequality. Each, it is contended, is about categories of individuals who have been subjected to social oppression. Moreover, if this can be established, then the weight of public opinion can be mobilized to root out racism, classism, and sexism in all of their nefarious incarnations. After it is understood that inequality is a ubiquitous manifestation of social injustice, the level of pu...