HUMAN HIERARCHIES: A GENERAL THEORY

Book ID/图书代码： 13149011B49407

English Summary/英文概要： Human beings are hierarchical animals. Always and everywhere, people have developed social ranking systems. These differ dramatically in how they are organized, but the underlying causal mechanisms that create and sustain them are the same. Whether they are on the top or bottom of the heap, people attempt to be superior to some other persons or group. This is the root of Melvyn L. Fein’s thesis presented in Human Hierarchies: A General Theory.

Fein traces the development of changes from hunter-gatherer times to our own techno-commercial society. In moving from small to large communities, humans went from face-to-face contests for superiority to more anonymous and symbolic ones. Societies evolved from hunting bands where the parties knew each other through big-men societies, chieftainships, agrarian empires, patronage chains, caste societies, estate systems, and market-oriented democracies. Where once small groupings were organized primarily by strong forces such as personal relationships, the now standard large groupings are more dependent on weaker forces such as those provided by social roles.

Bureaucracies and professional roles have become prominent. Bureaucracies allow large-scale organizations to maintain control of people by limiting the potential destructiveness of unregulated tests of strength and by clarifying chains of command. Their rigidity and unresponsiveness requires that they be supplemented by professional roles. At the same time, a proliferation of self-motivated experts delegate authority downward, thereby introducing a more flexible decentralization. This analysis is a unique and significant advance in both the sociology and anthropology of stratification among humans.

Chinese Summary/中文概要： 人类是分等级的动物。人们发展的社会等级系统经常且随处可见。这些等级系统最大的不同在于它们的组织方式，但建立和维持它们的潜在因果机制却是完全相同的。无论人类是在这个等级的顶端还是底端，他们都尝试着去超过其他的人或组织。这是Melvyn L. Fein在《人类等级：普遍理论》一书中论点的根基。

Fein追溯了由狩猎采集时代到我们现在的技术商业社会的发展变化。随着由小的社区发展到大的社区，人类也从面对面的竞争发展到了匿名的且象征性的方式。人类社会也从开始的彼此相互了解的狩猎团体进化到了公系氏族、酋长社会、农业帝国、乘客链、种姓社会、房地产系统和以市场为导向的民主发展的社会。从前，小的组织一向是由像个人关系这样的强力团体来领导，而如今标准的大团体却更依赖于像社会角色提供的弱势群体。

官僚政治和职业角色开始成为主流。官僚政治允许大型组织通过限制潜在的不受监管的破坏性力量和澄清命令链来保持对人们的控制。它们的刻板和迟钝反应不得不要求职业角色来辅助。同时，不断增生的自我激励的专家指派下属为代表，因此引入了更加灵活的权力分散。这种分析是社会学和人类学关于人类分层的独特且重大的进步。(LNL)

Awards/获奖情况：

About the Author/作者介绍： Melvyn L. Fein是佐治亚肯尼索州立大学社会学的教授。除了作为专业和公共社会学杂志的编辑外，他还是许多书的作者，包括《人类等级》和《丢失的和正在失去的》（都由Transaction出版。）

Melvyn L. Fein is professor of sociology at Kennesaw State University in Georgia. In addition to being editor of the Journal of Public and Professional Sociology, he is the author of numerous books, including Human Hierarchies and On Loss and Losing (both published by Transaction).

Format:HARDCOVER

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