The Emergence and Persistence of Inequality in Premodern Societies

Samuel Bowles · Eric Alden Smith · Monique Borgerhoff Mulder

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Cross-Cultural and Social Analysis Historical Economic and Social Studies Income, Poverty, and Inequality

Abstract

In this special section we propose an interpretation of the emergence and persistence of wealth inequality in premodern populations along with ethnographic and quantitative evidence exploring this hypothesis. The long‐term trajectory of inequality in premodern societies, we suggest, is based on the differing importance of three classes of wealth—material, embodied, and relational—together with differences in the transmission of these types of wealth across generations. Subsequent essays in this forum use data on individual and household wealth from 21 populations to evaluate this and related propositions concerning the interaction of wealth class, transmission rates, production systems (foraging, horticultural, pastoral, and agricultural), and inequality. Here we motivate our interpretation by applying our ideas to the Holocene transition from more egalitarian to more stratified societies, introduce key concepts that are developed in the subsequent essays, and comment on some of the limitations of our study.

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References

1956The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies.2003The evolution of altruistic punishment 1970A Theory of the Origin of the State 2008A farewell to alms: a brief economic history of the world 2000The archaeology of death and burial 2002The Inheritance of Inequality 1995Evolutionary Ecology and Human Behavior 1974Journal of Archaeological Science

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2017The behavioural constellation of deprivation: Causes and consequences 2016Social Dominance Theory: Explorations in the Psychology of Oppression 2016The evolution of inequality 2010Wealth Transmission and Inequality among Hunter‐Gatherers 2021Economic Inequality in Preindustrial Times: Europe and Beyond 2010Pastoralism and Wealth Inequality 2016Modernizing Evolutionary Anthropology

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