Sluka: "Social stratification is the central feature of the state and civilization, and Gerald Berreman, Morton Fried, John Bodley, and other like-minded anthropologists have emphasized it as the most dangerous feature of contemporary society. [...] Bodley has argued that social stratification is linked to all of our major contemporary human problems, and is the most fundamental characteristic of civilization 'from which other critical problem-causing features are ultimately derived' (1985:217). Social stratification leads to such conflict-inducing factors as the market economy; ethnic, religious, and ideological discrimination; socioeconomic deprivation; political inequality and its correlates such as infringement of rights, injustice, and oppression; the absence of effective channels of peaceful or systemic resolution of grievances and conflicts; exploitation and alienation; and [...] state terror to maintain and defend the order of stratification against challenges to elite rule and the social, economic, and political status quo."
see the work of Gerald Berreman, "who has dedicated his professional life to the study of systems of social inequality"