Yes, quite a few. Done some disorganized, informal reading, as well.
of our hard wired-pecking order drives,
I'm suspicious of the phrase 'hard-wired' in the first place: it carries a connotation of automata - creatures with no choice and no responsibility. My experience of human beings doesn't match that picture.
That pecking-order idea is also a big assumption about "our" drives, given the variety of social arrangements in "our" evolutionary history. While we do observe hierarchies in many other intelligent species, they certainly do not all fit the same model. The model itself comes from the observation of domestic fowl - and i have to wonder how closely that society approximates the natural order. I'm not aware of any animal societies that routinely discriminate against a group for irrational reasons.
Closer to home, the variety of arrangements in the certified human communities about which we have reliable information, suggests that stratification is not an inescapable necessity of human groups.
and our innate desires to be superior in matters of race, sex, nationalism, religious preference, and not only caste distinction, but at every level of our home and workplace existence?
None of those desires logically follows the word "innate". For every example of competition, there is at least one example of collaboration and co-operation. *
Nor are all of those social structures evolutionary developments. Where are nationalism and religion in ape culture? Race, too, is a recent human invention. Other social species are organized in kinship groups, yes, and they do clash with other groups over territory, watering holes or food supply - but they don't much care what the other group
looks like.
People don't either - until their authority figures teach them to. Little children can't care less what a potential playmate looks like: they'll toddle up to a strange child, dog or armadillo with the same open curiosity. Something innate ought to manifest without an adult having to yank them away, screaming, "Don't touch that!!! Dirty, dirty!!!"
I include group, as well as individual, perspectives as they apply to political and sporting club affiliations.
Except that prejudice doesn't work at all the same way in individuals, sporting clubs and political parties.
I believe it to be the basic cause of the ever-present schoolyard bullying at child level.
If that were so, you'd expect it to be uniformly distributed in all societies. And yet that is not what we find.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30020-1/fulltextIn fact, I submit that bullying in school, as also in politics and workplaces, is a byproduct of societal norms and expectations.
And because it is an innate drive,
It's not. In functional societies, the relative abilities and leadership potential of members is determined through childhood competition, but requires no humiliating or victimization of one's cohort.
(Well, think about it! You're a primitive tribesman, the best hunter in your clan. You regularly lead expeditions of the same group of men. Do you really want three guys at your back who have hated, feared and resented you for most of their lives?)
No, this is behaviour caused by dysfunctional organization and skewed values in badly corrupted societies.
The behaviours appear to be universal because were drawing all our contemporary examples from societies in terminal decline.
* mental image archives. Think of the happiest groups of people you have ever seen. Set aside one-offs like a wedding party or graduation: pick out the scenes where people are living their mundane lives.
What are happy people actually doing? In my experience they are almost invariably immersed in some challenging task: restoring an antique motorcycle, baking cherry pies, setting up a campsite, planting a flower garden, decorating a Christmas tree, building a Mars rover or a cathedral. There is nothing as emotionally fulfilling for a human being as sharing meaningful work with a team in which he or she is an appreciated contributing member.
Civilized societies harness, cripple and pervert
that innate drive for the service of its elite.