{"id":2617,"date":"2011-03-18T05:07:25","date_gmt":"2011-03-18T12:07:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/?p=2617"},"modified":"2011-05-10T07:03:55","modified_gmt":"2011-05-10T14:03:55","slug":"the-power-of-scale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/the-power-of-scale\/","title":{"rendered":"The Power of Scale"},"content":{"rendered":"
(2003) John Bodley<\/span><\/span> <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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Bodley distinguishes two broad streams, or perspectives, in sociology \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and claims that the model he presents in Power of Scale <\/em>bridges them. One is the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153interpretive, symbolic or postmodern\u00e2\u20ac\u009d approach. This view, using Bodley\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s example of feudal Southeast Asia, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153emphasiz[es] cultural meanings and symbolic views \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 describ[ing] political rulers as benevolent figureheads who were primarily concerned with building temples, hosting ritual spectacles, and protecting the populace\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. Under this account, I suppose, Bodley subsumes the views of those who hold that inequitable distribution of wealth is something of a necessary evil towards greater goals like the Hubble Space Telescope, Le Louvre, and the Great Pyramid of Giza.<\/p>\n

The other is the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153materialist, political-economic or practice\u00e2\u20ac\u009d approach, which tends instead to express itself in terms of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcexploitation\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcpower\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. By my reading, Bodley\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s work is more of an elaboration of the latter than its bridge to the former. Marx\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 bicameral proletariat\/bourgeoisie society is stretched out like a pyramidal accordion into a multi-tiered hierarchy with very gentle slopes. Ownership of factors of production is de-emphasized in favour of control over lower-tiered human beings, through the manifestation of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcsocial power\u00e2\u20ac\u2122.<\/p>\n

Different types of society allow different scales of pyramid, and Bodley recognizes three scales \u00e2\u20ac\u201c perhaps borrowed loosely from Eric Wolf\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s division on the basis of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dckin-ordered\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dctributary\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and \u00e2\u20ac\u02dccapitalist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 \u00e2\u20ac\u201cmodes of production. Bodley calls them the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153domestic\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153political\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153commercial\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201cscales.<\/p>\n

The picture that emerges is one of society as a pyramid whose slope<\/em> is invariant, but whose height<\/em> is determined by the size of the society it represents. The larger a society, the more tiers it can support, and the larger becomes the aggregate control (= power over underlings) by elites occupying the apex. However, Bodley acknowledges that the individual wealth of those occupying the base of the pyramid also increases with scale, so we get something like this:<\/p>\n

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In my picture of a society that is scaling up, I use income as a proxy for Bodley\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcsocial power\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c as he himself often does. The lowest-tier per-capita income increases from $1 to $2, while the increase between adjoining tiers remains constant (at factor 10). Average income increases from $2.80 to $14.86. However, and this is Bodley\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s point, the majority see their relative<\/em> income dropping: a drop relative to both total income and average income. The converse increase in the relative <\/em>income of those in the upper tiers is tantamount to Bodley\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s core contention: power becomes increasingly concentrated with scale.<\/p>\n

The so-called \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcprogressivist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 argument is aptly epitomized by Bodley as the idea that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153over the long run people have in sum been getting richer, and more moral, as the scale of culture has increased.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Curiously, Bodley\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s model and all his supporting data can actually be taken to support<\/strong> that view, if one chooses to use absolute wealth as the unit of analysis. To balance that argument, many recent findings from the science of happiness can be brought to bear: more than any factor, ceteris paribus<\/em>, it is the disparity in socio-economic status between members of a society that correlates with overall well-being.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(2003) John Bodley         Bodley distinguishes two broad streams, or perspectives, in sociology \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and claims that the model he presents in Power of Scale bridges them. One is the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153interpretive, symbolic or postmodern\u00e2\u20ac\u009d approach. This view, using Bodley\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s example of feudal Southeast Asia, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153emphasiz[es] cultural meanings and symbolic views \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 describ[ing] … Continue reading The Power of Scale<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civilization","category-development"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2617"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2681,"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2617\/revisions\/2681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}