Studying Societies and Cultures by Lawrence A. Kuznar Stephen K. Sanderson

Author:Lawrence A. Kuznar, Stephen K. Sanderson [Lawrence A. Kuznar, Stephen K. Sanderson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781317251255
Google: LRIeCwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-12-03T06:00:23+00:00

Complex Inequality: The Empirical Evidence

Some controversy surrounds the use of the term egalitarian in anthropology (Salzman, 1999). It cannot be taken to indicate strict equality, because there is always some degree of inequality in wealth, access to mates, and social status; at best equality only ever exists as equality of opportunity. This is amply borne out when quantitative measures of status and equality are applied to actual groups. It is striking that, in our research, no matter what measure of value is used—cost of house construction, money, beads, access to mates, hunting returns, gathering returns—there is never anything like complete equality. Furthermore, inequalities typically have S-shaped oscillations as one moves from the poorest to the wealthiest individuals in a society. We have documented these S-shaped, or sigmoid, wealth distributions among nonhuman primates, foragers, chiefdoms, ancient kingdoms, modern states, and even in the current global economy (Kuznar, 2001, 2002a, 2002b; Kuznar and Frederick, 2003, 2005a, 2005b; Kuznar and Gragson, 2005.).

The flattened areas of the S-shaped curves represent wealth-based classes. Economists and anthropologists have proposed that individuals on the border between classes should exhibit risk-taking behavior (Friedman and Savage, 1948; Winterhalder, Lu, and Tucker, 1999), and empirical findings from studies of peasant societies support this proposal (Cancian, 1972, 1989). Individuals in such positions have more to gain (entrance into a higher social class and a better material standard of living) than to lose (staying in the same class) by taking risks. We have correlated risk taking on these class borders with political activism, collective violence, and terrorist recruitment (Kuznar, Sedlmeyer, and Frederick, 2005; Kuznar and Frederick, 2003). Since the determinative factor in risk taking is being on the cusp of a class boundary, rather than simply being poor, the approach allows us to predict dissatisfaction and risk taking by some wealthy individuals, as well as complacency of some poor ones.

We have discovered two fundamental wealth distributions in human economies. The comparative method, in which societies representing different levels of socioeconomic integration are compared as though on an evolutionary scale, provides a sense of the transitions in inequality that accompanied the Neolithic transition and the rise of chiefdoms and the state (Sanderson, 1999b:88–94). A simple sigmoid curve is typical of small-scale forager societies, and consists of an S-shaped (sigmoid) oscillation around a linear increase in wealth. These oscillations are defined as quasiperiods because true periods oscillate around zero, whereas our periods oscillate around increasing lines or curves. Figure 8.1 represents the hunting success rates of men in a Ju/’hoansi community in Botswana (Kent, 1996), whose quasiperiods depict three “classes” of hunters: a few individuals who are superior in talents and abilities, a “middle class” of individuals who are average, and a few individuals at the bottom who are very poor hunters (Kuznar, 2002a; Kuznar and Gragson, 2005).

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