ABSTRACT
A society is differentiated and stratified in many ways; hierarchies can be formed and found along multiple dimensions: political power, social honour, economic wealth, cultural knowledge, and even skin colour. All hierarchies, however, do not have the same import. In any society, therefore, one can potentially identify a ‘hierarchy of hierarchies’ – different dimensions of social inequality and hierarchy form a hierarchy in terms of its importance in shaping people’s lives and social relationships.
