Why Did Social Stratification Emerge?

Without exception, modern industrial and postindustrial societies are socially stratified-that is, they contain social groups such as families, classes, or ethnic groups that have unequal access to important advantages such as economic resources, power, and prestige. Based on archaeological evidence, it seems the emergence of social stratification was connected with the advent of agriculture roughly 10,000 years ago. Until then, all human societies depended entirely on food they hunted, gathered, and/or fished, and so anthropologists are reasonably sure that higher levels of stratification emerged relatively recently in human history. Archaeological sites dating before 8,000 years ago do not show extensive evidence of inequality. Houses do not appear to vary much in size or content, and different communities of the same culture are similar in size. Signs of inequality appear first in the Middle East about 2,000 years after agriculture emerged in that region. Inequality in burial suggests inequality in life. Particularly telling are unequal child burials. It is unlikely that children could achieve high status by their own achievements. So, when archaeologists find statues and ornaments only in some children's tombs, as at the 7,500-year-old site of Tell es-Sawwan, the grave goods suggest that those children belonged to a higher-ranking family or a higher class.

Why did social stratification develop in the first place? Some scholars stress the importance of surplus production that resulted from increased agricultural activity. Others stress the degree to which wealth can be transmitted across generations. With regard to surpluses, the cultural anthropologist Marshall Sahlins suggested that surpluses would result in greater scope and complexity of the system of distributing goods, enhancing the status of chiefs (leaders) as agents for redistributing goods. Gradually, this would give the chiefs more control over resources and ultimately more power. The comparative sociologist Gerhard Lenski, too, argued that production of a surplus is the stimulus in the development of stratification, but he focused primarily on the conflict that arises over control of that surplus. Lenski concluded that the distribution of the surplus will be determined on the basis of power. Thus, inequalities in power promote unequal access to economic resources and simultaneously give rise to inequalities in privilege and prestige. A broader argument is that a surplus may lead to some advantages of one subgroup over another, such as more people to support a stronger military force, or more knowledge that could lead to the development of specialized, productive technology.

The surplus theories of Sahlins and Lenski do not really address why people would produce surpluses or why redistributors or leaders will want, or be able, to acquire greater control over resources. Sahlins later amended his theory to suggest the reverse-that leaders may encourage the development of a surplus to enhance their prestige. But even if that were so, prestige enhancement is not the same as wealth enhancement. After all, the redistributors or leaders in many nonindustrial societies do not have greater wealth than others, and custom seems to keep things that way. One suggestion is that, as long as followers have mobility, they can reject leaders they do not like by moving away from them. But when people start to make more permanent investments in land or technology (such as irrigation systems), they are more likely to put up with a leader's elevated status in exchange for protection. Another suggestion is that access to economic resources becomes unequal only when there is population pressure-increased competition for resources resulting from population growth. Such pressure may be what induces redistributors to try to keep more land and other resources for themselves and their families.

The anthropologist C. K. Meek offered a modern example of how population pressure in northern Nigeria may have led to economic stratification. At one time, a tribal member could obtain the right to use land by asking permission of the chief and presenting him with a token gift in recognition of his higher status. But, by 1921, the reduction in the amount of available land had led to a system under which applicants offered the chief large payments for scarce land. As a result of these payments, farms came to be regarded as private property, and unequal access to such property became institutionalized.