What is a hierarchy?
It is a system in which members of an organisation or society are ranked according to relative status or authority.
But what this really means, and what we are really going to be talking about today, is power. Power of one individual over the future and state of another.
Hierarchies are present in nature, for example the food chain, the relative status of an alpha male in a lion pack. However there are specific hierarchies denoted in human society which differs. This theme will be explored today in its various forms.
Man – made hierarchies are useful for societies – they denote rank and information about status, meaning that (theoretically) the person with the most information can make decisions about the rest of the population.
However, this has been manipulated in a huge number of ways throughout history, and these objects are unified under a common theme of man’s meddling with the hierarchies to keep power in the hands of the powerful.