Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Government by an alien or aliens; foreign rule. Also, erroneously, eterarchy.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun obsolete The government of an alien.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun countable An example of this government.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

heter- (“other, different”) + -archy (“rule”); equivalent to Katharevousa ἑτεραρχία (eterarkhia) / Dimotiki ετεραρχία (eterarkhia)

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word heterarchy.

Examples

  • In order to preserve the "bottom up" approach he argues that there has to be some movement from heterarchy to hierarchy , in order to combat some of the negative generative effects I only have my head partially around it still

    slipping into the darkness of non creative safety Bill Kerr 2008

  • As many of you have acknowledged on FDL, the real culture war is not about religion, fundamentalism, progressivism or conservatism, but about hierarchy versus heterarchy.

    Firedoglake » FDL Late Nite: Bring on the Culture “War” 2006

  • The Feminine strives to establish “rapport” (a heterarchy); while the Masculine strives to establish systems in which to “report” (hierarchies).

    Smart Mobs » Blog Archive » Smart Mobs and Antiwar Protests 2003

  • How lovely the word “heterarchy” is … It seems esentially Feminine.

    Smart Mobs » Blog Archive » Smart Mobs and Antiwar Protests 2003

  • Perhaps the heterarchy can save us from a 100 year religious war …

    Smart Mobs » Blog Archive » Smart Mobs and Antiwar Protests 2003

  • Hegemony rides again - if it was ever dismounted - after New Labour's much touted dream of replacing hierarchy with heterarchy, government with governance, via involvement, participation, empowerment, citizen-power, place-shaping, localisation and all the other obfuscating jargon used to hustle the populace into believing we inside the big tent.

    The First Post: Latest 2009

  • My concern is this: Bringing the hidden connectors into the light by, for instance, labelling them as the heterarchy might result in them being herded into just another box, and told to sort it out - to end up as just another committee.

    Wirearchy 2009

  • That won't happen by e-mailing alone, just one more challenge thrown up by this new organizational form of heterarchy.

    Wirearchy 2009

  • There are many useful dichotomies available to describe culture (ying - yang), organisation (hierarchy - heterarchy or ad-hocracy), cognition (abstract - concrete), emotion (impersonal - personal), ethics (judgement - narrative), anthropology (universals - non universals), futurology (cyborgs - human) and vocations (scientist - artist)

    the yin and yang of dichotomies Bill Kerr 2008

  • watching this video gave me more of a sense of zittrain the person and his concerns, that he is entertaining as a presenter as well as very informative - that despite being called a "moron" a lot recently he will pursue these issues he has a graph towards the end vertical axis: top down to bottom up horizontal axis: hierarchy to heterarchy

    slipping into the darkness of non creative safety Bill Kerr 2008

  • Heterarchy—like, a monarchy except a lot of people are in power?

    Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age Annalee Newitz 2023

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • The government of an alien. Greek heteros foreign, and arche, rule.

    Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon, c. 1850

    May 17, 2008

  • "A heterarchy is a system of organization replete with overlap, multiplicity, mixed ascendancy, and/or divergent-but-coexistent patterns of relation. Definitions of the term vary among the disciplines: in social and information sciences, heterarchies are networks of elements in which each element shares the same "horizontal" position of power and authority, each playing a theoretically equal role. But in biological taxonomy, the requisite features of heterarchy involve, for example, a species sharing, with a species in a different family, a common ancestor which it does not share with members of its own family. This is theoretically possible under principles of "horizontal gene transfer."

    July 26, 2009