The Origins of Status Hierarchies: A Formal Theory and Empirical Test

This article offers a formal theoretical model of the emergence of hierarchy that bridges the division between individualistic and structuralist accounts of inequality. In the model, actors reproduce status hierarchies by adjusting their own status‐conferring gestures according to collective attributions. These collective attributions are just the aggregate of individual gestures, leading to a self‐reinforcing status ranking. Winner‐take‐all...