Coalitions of subordinates can collectively suppress would-be dominants, holding a group egalitarian by inverting the usual direction of hierarchy.
Boehm's 1993 analysis of forager and tribal societies found a recurring pattern of ridicule, disobedience, ostracism and, at the limit, execution directed at individuals who tried to dominate. The hierarchy is real and points upward from the bottom: the rank and file are collectively dominant over any individual who would lead.
In practice
- A team that mocks the colleague who volunteers to supervise has enforced a hierarchy without anyone occupying a position in it.
- A committee where any member may block ensures nobody leads, and calls the result consensus.
- Possible explanations
- The explanation is coalition: individually weaker members are collectively stronger than any would-be dominant, and ridicule, disobedience, ostracism and at the limit execution are the graduated means by which they enforce it.
- In its favour
- Boehm's synthesis documents the pattern consistently across forager and tribal societies, and it explains how egalitarian groups remain so without formal institutions.
- Against it
- It is built largely on ethnographic synthesis, the inference from present-day foragers to ancestral conditions is contested, and the societies studied are not a random sample of the human past.
- Standing
- Built largely on ethnographic synthesis of forager societies; the inference from present-day foragers to ancestral conditions is contested.
- Subject
- Sociology & Culture
- Essay
- How societies hold together, sort people, and change