In trying to figure this stuff out, I have found much help in studies that try to explain and analyze the concrete machinations and interactions of various stratification/heirarchicization processes.
I might suggest Beneria and Roldan's 1987 book _The Crossroads of Class and Gender: Homework, Subsonctracting and Household Dynamics in Mexico City (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press) as a starter. Herein some of the varied and intersecting processes of heirarchy-making are laid out pretty clearly (i.e. how the never-in-real-life-separable experiences of class and gender can none the less be analytically separated to understnd certian outcomes, orientations, etc.).
Also, in a VERY suggestive development are the works of what I might call historians with an anthropoligist's attentiveness to detail, or anthropologists concerned with history and breaking out of the ahistorical "ethographic present" too often constructed around their representations.
In these works (cites to follow) we can see an embrace of the micro and marco in ongoing, power-laden processes. And along the way, they demonstrate how various interacting forms of empowerment/disempowerment (heirachicization) produce specific outcomes -- sometimes ruptures though more often accomodation and getting-by.
Note also: central to all this is a redefinition of the state and "state-making" processes, that involve the day to day activities of folks. Taking Corrigan and Sayer's 1985 book _the Great Arch: English State Formation as Cultural Revolution_ as their point of deperture, some of these researchers seek to show how state-making is a process of managing and negotiating these processes of heirarchicization. The nifty part is that producing and reproducing these "hegemonies" is shown to be intimitely related to specific, interacting heirachies (class, gender, ethnicity), played out in specific ways in concrete people's lives. Note too: they also indicate fissures, instabilites, etc. in those processes.
At the end of the day is all this any more than "shedding light on processes" as political act? No, not really. There's precious litte to suggest what might be done -- except for more research along the lines outlined. BUT -- big but -- the suggestion is a good one for a left too often ignorant of (or worse: disparaging of) forms of opression that don't turn on alientaion/exploitation.
Cites:
Joseph, Gilbert M. and Daniel Nugent, eds. _Everyday Forms of State Fromation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico._ Duke U Press 1994.
Alonso, Ana Maria. _Thread of Blood: Colonialism, Revolution and Gender on Mexico's Northern Frontier._ Univ of Az Press 1995.
And again, for a general statement on the this project, which brings together I feel some of the best of what Gramsci ("hegemony"), Foucault (power), Bourdieu & de Certeau (everyday practice), Williams (cultural studies), E. P. Thompson (history), Harding & Haraway & de Lauretis (feminist "disrruptions" in cultural studies, history, etc.) have to offer -- see the Culture/Power/History introductory essay.
Tom
Tom Kruse / Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-42) 48242 Email: tkruse at albatros.cnb.net