Dominant groups build institutions that co-opt subordinates rather than merely repress them

Evidence

Building on those ideas, I assume that humans are rational, selfinterested, sociable actors who pursue strategies to maximize their control over resources (social, material, and political), subject to constraints (Jackman, 1994, 2001). Those who are resource-advantaged (e.g., with more material resources, superior technology, or greater physical strength) cooperate with those who are similarly endowed to establish and maintain stable institutions that expropriate social, material, and political resources from the vulnerable resource-disadvantaged who fall within their grasp. The resulting institutional structure may take a variety of forms as it evolves strategically in response to the specific exigencies that dominants confront, but it is designed to provide a continuing flow of benefits by constraining subordinates’ options. Ensnared subordinates, from their weaker position, are driven to follow strategies that are directed toward protecting their current holdings from further incursions, while working to ameliorate or improve their conditions of life when opportunity permits. Expropriative institutions also inevitably embroil the practice of violence, but it too is organized so as to co-opt rather than alienate subordinates. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 667

Categorization

• XREF: Aligns with and extends existing vault claims on ritual human sacrifice as stabilizer of stratified societies — the co-optation mechanism parallels how sacrificial rituals stabilize hierarchy. — connects to: Entrenchment mechanisms work through groups with aligned preservation interests — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 471; Internal reconciliation forces a subgroup to act through superordinate institutions it dominates — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt: International…, 801; Institutions arise from vertical power asymmetries, not only horizontal coordination dilemmas — Walter Korpi, The Iceberg of Power below the Surface:…, 10 (+2 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that even violence within expropriative institutions is ‘organized to co-opt rather than alienate’ subordinates is a dense, counterintuitive mechanism worth sitting with.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 667