The long-cherished anthropological belief in perfectly egalitarian societies, groups viewed with true equality of wealth and power, is now being actively challenged. New research finds this notion to be a myth and demonstrates that even hunter-gatherer groups exhibit persistent, patterned inequalities. These societies maintain relative fairness only through constant negotiation and active resistance against potential dominators.
The Persistence of Power: Anthropologists Revisited Inequality Across Seven Domains in Nominally Egalitarian Cultures
A cross-cultural review of seven subsistence groups, which are commonly held up as model of fairness found that inequality is universal to the human condition. The relative fairness observed in small-scale societies is not due to a benign social structure, but to the successful political actions of individuals resisting dominance.
Background
Anthropologists D. Stibbard-Hawkes and C. von Rueden did a comprehensive empirical review and cross-cultural analysis of seven traditional subsistence groups. These include hunter-gatherer societies like the Tanzanian Hadza and the Central African BaYaka, ethnic groups like the Malay Batek, Philippine Agta, and the forager-horticulturalists Bolivian Tsimane.
Existing data were synthesized to challenge the notion of equality by systematically examining evidence of patterned inequalities across seven key social domains in the groups investigated. These domains were embodied capital, social capital, leadership and influence, age-based authority, gender, material capital or land tenure, and reproduction.
Main Findings
The core finding of the study centers on the debunking of the long-held notion that true egalitarian societies, or those with complete equality of wealth, power, and status, existed. This realization fundamentally requires revisiting the definition of egalitarianism and shifting how human political organization is understood. The following are the specific findings:
• No Perfect Equality: The study concludes that no human society exists where equalities of power, wealth, and rank are genuinely realized. Relative equality is not a natural resting state, but rather a tenuous or fragile condition achieved through constant social resistance and negotiation among group members.
• Patterned Disparities: Inequalities are not random; they are persistent and patterned across seven core social domains. These disparities, ranging from skill and reputation to access to resources and reproductive success, influence the life outcomes of individuals significantly across the entire social structure.
• Process, Not Outcome: The term “egalitarian” must be redefined, focusing not on the outcome of perfect equality, but on the process. These are societies where individuals actively work to restrain others’ dominance through social mechanisms like demand-sharing and status-levelling.
• Need for Constant Effort: The relative fairness observed in the investigated groups is an achievement and not a default state. Maintaining this level of equality requires continuous effort and active resistance against the natural human impulse toward competition, ambition, and the accumulation of differential status.
Moreover, to reiterate the pattern of disparities, Stibbard-Hawkes and von Rueden found that such inequalities persist within the seven investigated groups across seven specific and interconnected domains of social life. For example, when it comes to material capital, the groups often allocate exclusive rights to specific resources or defined territorial boundaries.
Inequalities in embodied capital manifest through differences in physical strength, hunting skill, or practical knowledge, thus leading to advantages. On the other hand, when it comes to social capital, disparities in kin networks, alliances, and reputation result in differential support. Age and gender shape structural inequalities because of their role in directing social order.
Takeaways
Note that the researchers emphasized that their findings are not an argument that inequality is natural, acceptable, or desirable. The purpose of the study is not to stop attempts to reduce inequality. Their work is intended to dispel naive notions of simple and perfectly balanced human communities and challenge how people understand the root causes of inequalities.
Moreover, their findings underscore the difficulty of equality. The study paints a more realistic understanding of human political and social dynamics to show that achieving true equality has always been difficult and requires deliberate and constant effort and ongoing negotiation among group members to prevent larger and deeper disparities from institutionalizing.
FURTHER READING AND REFERENCE
- Stibbard-Hawkes, D., and von Rueden, C. 2025. “Egalitarianism is Not Equality: Moving from Outcome to Process in the Study of Human Political Organisation.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 1-76. DOI: 1017/s0140525x25103932