Formal Consensus and Non-Hierarchical Social Organization

Formal Consensus and Non-Hierarchical Social Organization (Revised)

From a 2008 note to an interactional analysis of designed equality

Wayne Martin Mellinger, Ph.D. · Oct 4, 2026

Author's Note, 2026

I am leaving the 2008 post below largely intact because it records an argument at the moment it began to form. I have corrected a few typos but otherwise the text is unchanged.

The question it posed—how do we "do equality"?—later became part of a larger Critical Interactionist inquiry into the situated production of hierarchy, recognition, participation, and moral order. That broader inquiry is the subject of my essay "Doing Equality." That essay now carries the full reconsideration of the formal-consensus question this post first raised.

Below, I first set out what the question became, then reproduce the original post as an archive.

What the Question Became

The 2008 post asked how people “do equality.” Eighteen years later, I can say what the question was really asking and what an answer looks like. The full argument appears in “Doing Equality”; what follows is its core.

Equality is an accomplishment, not a condition. If hierarchy is produced in the details of interaction—who interrupts, who changes the topic, who summarizes what “we” decided—then non-hierarchy must be produced there too. A group's bylaws can declare its members equal. Whether they are equal is settled turn by turn.

Formal consensus is a designed interaction order. The groups I meant to study in 2008 did not leave equality to goodwill. Speaking stacks, rounds, hand signals, facilitation, separate phases for questions and concerns, and the block each target a specific way ordinary talk distributes power. Read together, they amount to a practical theory of domination written by activists. They show that some forms of equality require more structure, not less.

The procedures create new asymmetries. Veterans know the procedures; newcomers do not. Facilitators acquire the right to summarize the room. Fluent speakers can dominate without breaking a single rule. The block is open to everyone but costs some people far more to use. And informal networks of friendship and seniority persist beneath formal equality, much as Jo Freeman warned they would in groups that rejected structure altogether.

Recognition is not voice, and voice is not traction. Being admitted as a legitimate participant, being given an accountable chance to speak, and having one's words actually change what happens next are three different things. Institutions can become more inclusive at the first two levels while remaining unequal at the third. That is the gap between the right to speak and the right to matter.

The answer to the 2008 question. I asked then whether equality is done through “a special symmetry of interactional moves.” It is not. Equality is an interactional order in which rights to speak, define, evaluate, challenge, decide, and receive consequential uptake are sufficiently distributed—and in which recurring asymmetries can be made visible, accountable, and repairable.

Archive: The Original Post (August 28, 2008)

This summer I am teaching a class in group dynamics at Antioch University Santa Barbara. This class applies social psychological theories and methods to understanding real-world group dynamics in these students' lives. Of course, I spend a considerable amount of time discussing Critical Interactionism.

Many of the readings I use for the class present "mainstream" thinking on topics such as decision-making and leadership, but I try to introduce alternative ways of thinking about workplaces and organizations. Specifically, I am interested in advocating non-hierarchical forms of social organization, such as used in many progressive groups across the globe.

In "Doing Equality" (June 16, 2008), I wrote:

Here I want to consider the social processes through which non-hierarchical social organization get done? What are the interactional dynamics of consensus decision-making? What does turn-taking organization look like among equal, respectful partners? How do we "do equality"?

To understand inequality, we need to examine equality, so that we have a "baseline" with which to compare. Is equality done through a special symmetry of interactional moves, so that, for example, you often see equal amounts of listening and talking by each?

Work on micropolitics has pointed to some types of turns as more dominating: interruption, topic changes, storytelling, evaluative statements, the silence of not paying attention.

I want to do participant observation of "formal consensus" in progressive, grassroots political social movements, such as the Santa Barbara InfoShop, Food Not Bombs, and other local groups attempting to use non-hierarchical means to achieve social justice and social change.

This is what blogs look like when they are just an emergent idea.

August 28, 2008 — Wayne Martin Mellinger

---

Continue reading: “Doing Equality: The Interactional Accomplishment of Non-Hierarchical Social Organization” [add link once published].