> Miles Jackson wrote:
>
>>Nonhierarchical social arrangements are relatively common in human
>>societies; people just take them for granted. (e.g., peer groups,
>>many family relationships, food co-ops, my local bike repair
>>collective, most open source software projects, lots of bands,
>>just to draw a few examples from our own society.)
>
> Those are pretty small groups, and I'll bet lots of them have hidden
> hierarchies.
>
> Doug
It strikes me that perhaps a more interesting question is what are the rules of reproduction which sustain any given institution, organization or economic system. What sustains the particular nature of hierarchy in Feudal systems is quite different than those that sustain hierarchy in a capitalist system. Similarly, the rules of reproduction for the kind of hierarchy that sustains this list for example is very different from those rules of reproduction which sustain the hierarchical organization of a capitalist firm. And the consequences for the individuals participating in these very different hierarchical organizations should not be conflated simply because they can all be shown to have a hierarchical structure.
Travis