ABSTRACT
Social inequality belongs mostly to the rough and tumble arena of lived evolution. Contingent constraints and opportunities, arising along structural and motivational fault lines of social life, create a continuous potential for changes in the allocation of the results of collaborative actions. Some of these are subsequently stabilized by self-reinforcing dynamics and social control, and they are the primary reason why inequality is such a recurrent feature of human history. The evolution of inequality structures is a meandering process shaped by contingency and creativity, by opportunity and error, and by consolidation and change. The constraining effects of contingency have broad empirical consequences which interact with social inequality. Inequality structures have coincided with periods of major social change as well as with centuries of stagnation and social decline. Inequality imposes characteristic biases on internal and cultural selection. Inequality can reward good performance but is just as likely to impede initiative and protect ineptitude.
