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THE PUZZLE OF LENSKI'S CURVE

This article responds to calls for more attention to theoretical issues in the study of social stratification and mobility. As a starting point, I reconsider Lenski's Power and Privilege, the last bold effort to create a general theory of social stratification. One of Lenski's most interesting assertions was that the amount of inequality would `vary directly with the size of a society's surplus'. However, the mechanisms underlying this relation were not specified and, as Lenski himself noted, direct portionality fails to hold when one moves from agrarian to industrial societies. Utilizing game theory and a rate of return model, I suggest mechanisms that account for Lenski's curve (the observed curvilinear relationship between the size of the surplus and the amount of inequality).

Key Words: inequality • Lenski • mathematical models • social stratification • sociological theory

Rationality and Society, Vol. 12, No. 1, 25-38 (2000)
DOI: 10.1177/104346300012001002


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