Abstract
Abstract
Stibbard-Hawkes and von Rueden provide a valuable account of inequality across nominally egalitarian societies, but their attempt to salvage the egalitarian concept is less convincing. The processes they identify as maintaing relative equality are oriented around hunter-gatherer socioecology, while a different selection could categorize almost any human society as “egalitarian” in some domain. Gender-based coercion poses a strong challenge to the framework’s emphasis on individual autonomy.