Collapse (book)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed is a 2005 English-language book by University of California, Los Angeles geography professor Jared M. Diamond. The broad premise of Diamond's book is that it deals with "societal collapses involving an environmental component, and in some cases also contributions of climate change, hostile neighbors, and trade partners, plus questions of societal responses" (p. 15). In writing the book Diamond intended that its readers should learn from history (p. 23).

Contents 1 Synopsis 2 Reviews 2.1 Tim Flannery 2.2 The Economist 2.3 William Rees 2.4 Jennifer Marohasy 2.5 Malcolm Gladwell 3 Similar theories 4 Notes 5 References 6 See also 7 External links

[edit] Synopsis

In the prologue, Diamond summarizes Collapse in one paragraph, as follows.

	This book employs the comparative method to understand societal collapses to which environmental problems contribute. My previous book (Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies), had applied the comparative method to the opposite problem: the differing rates of buildup of human societies on different continents over the last 13,000 years. In the present book focusing on collapses rather than buildups, I compare many past and present societies that differed with respect to environmental fragility, relations with neighbors, political institutions, and other "input" variables postulated to influence a society's stability. The "output" variables that I examine are collapse or survival, and form of the collapse if collapse does occur. By relating output variables to input variables, I aim to tease out the influence of possible input variables on collapses.
—page 18

Collapse is divided into four parts.

• Part One describes the environment of the US state of Montana, focusing on the lives of several individuals in order to put a human face on the interplay between society and the environment
• Part Two describes past societies that have collapsed. Diamond uses a "framework" when considering the collapse of a society, consisting of five "sets of factors" that may affect what happens to a society: environmental damage, climatic change, hostile neighbors, loss of trading partners, and the society's own responses to its environmental problems. The societies Diamond describes are:
  • Easter Island (a society that collapsed entirely due to environmental damage)
  • The Polynesians of Pitcairn Island (environmental damage and loss of trading partners)
  • The Anasazi of the Southwestern USA (environmental damage and climate change)
  • The Maya of Central America (environmental damage, climate change, and hostile neighbours)
  • The Greenland Norse (environmental damage, loss of trading partners, climate change, hostile neighbours and unwillingness to change in the face of social collapse)
  • Finally, Diamond discusses three past success stories:
    • The tiny Pacific island of Tikopia
    • The agricultural success of central New Guinea
    • The Tokugawa-era forest management in Japan.
• Part Three examines modern societies, including:
  • The collapse into genocide of Rwanda, caused in part by overpopulation
  • The failure of Haiti compared with the relative success of its neighbour, the Dominican Republic
  • The problems facing a Developing nation, China
  • The problems facing a First World nation, Australia
• Part Four concludes the study by considering such subjects as business and globalization, and "extracts practical lessons for us today" (p. 22 – 23). Attention is given to the polder model as a way Dutch society has addressed its challenges.

[edit] Reviews

[edit] Tim Flannery

Tim Flannery gave Collapse a warm review in Science, writing^[1]

"... the fact that one of the world's most original thinkers has chosen to pen this mammoth work when his career is at his apogee is itself a persuasive argument that Collapse must be taken seriously. It is probably the most important book you will ever read."

[edit] The Economist

The Economist's review was generally favorable, although the anonymous reviewer had two disagreements. Firstly, the reviewer felt Diamond was not optimistic enough about the future. Secondly, the reviewer claimed Collapse contains some erroneous statistics: for instance, Diamond supposedly overstated the number of starving people in the world.^[2]

[edit] William Rees

University of British Columbia professor of ecological planning William Rees wrote that Collapse's most important lesson is that societies most able to avoid collapse are the ones that are most agile; they are able to adopt practices favorable to their own survival and avoid unfavorable ones. Moreoever, Rees wrote that Collapse is "a necessary antidote" to followers of Julian Simon, such as Bjørn Lomborg who authored The Skeptical Environmentalist. Rees explained this assertion as follows^[3]:

"Human behaviour towards the ecosphere has become dysfunctional and now arguably threatens our own long-term security. The real problem is that the modern world remains in the sway of a dangerously illusory cultural myth. Like Lomborg, most governments and international agencies seem to believe that the human enterprise is somehow 'decoupling' from the environment, and so is poised for unlimited expansion. Jared Diamond's new book, Collapse, confronts this contradiction head-on."

[edit] Jennifer Marohasy

In a recent edition of Energy and Environment, Jennifer Marohasy of the Institute of Public Affairs (a conservative think-tank in Australia), has a critical review of Collapse, in particular its chapter on Australia’s environmental degradation. Marohasy claims that Diamond reflects a popular view that is reinforced by environmental campaigning in Australia, but which is not supported by evidence, and argues that many of his claims are easily disproved.^[4]

[edit] Malcolm Gladwell

In Malcolm Gladwell's review in The New Yorker, he highlights the way which Diamond's approach differs from traditional historians by focusing on environmental issues rather than cultural questions.^[5]

Diamond’s distinction between social and biological survival is a critical one, because too often we blur the two, or assume that biological survival is contingent on the strength of our civilizational values... The fact is, though, that we can be law-abiding and peace-loving and tolerant and inventive and committed to freedom and true to our own values and still behave in ways that are biologically suicidal.

While Diamond doesn't reject the approach of traditional historians, his book, according to Gladwell, vividly illustrates the limitations of that approach. Gladwell demonstrates this with his own example of a recent ballot initiative in Oregon, where questions of property rights and other freedoms were subject to a free and healthy debate, but serious ecological questions were given scant attention.

[edit] Similar theories

In writing the book Diamond intended that its readers should learn from history (p. 23), re-igniting a theme explored by other historians.

British historian Arnold J. Toynbee in A Study of History (1934-1961) also studied the collapse of civilizations. Diamond agrees with Toynbee that "civilizations die from suicide, not by murder" when they fail to meet the challenges of their times. However, where Toynbee argues that the root cause of collapse is the decay of a society's "creative minority" into "a position of inherited privilege which it has ceased to merit", Diamond ascribes more weight to conscious minimization of environmental factors.

From another angle, U.S. historian Joseph Tainter in The Collapse of Complex Societies (1988) argues that observable causes of collapse such as environmental degradation ultimately result from diminishing returns on investments in energy, education and technological innovation.

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Flannery, T. (2005, January 7). "Learning from the past to change our future". In Science, 307, 45.
2. ^ "Of Porpoises and Plantations". (2005, January 13). In The Economist, 374, 76.
3. ^ Rees, W. (2005, January 6). "Contemplating the Abyss". In Nature, 433, 15 – 16.
4. ^ Jennifer Marohasy, "Australia's Environment: Undergoing Renewal, Not Collapse" (PDF), Energy and Environment 16 (2005)
5. ^ Malcolm Gladwell, "The Vanishing", The New Yorker, 2005-01-03

[edit] References

• Diamond, Jared (2005). Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. ISBN 0-14-303655-6.

[edit] See also

• Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
• A Study of History by Arnold J. Toynbee
• The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter
• Creeping normalcy
• Decline of the Roman Empire, over 200 theories on why Rome collapsed.

[edit] External links

• The first chapter
• Tokugawa Shoguns vs. Consumer Democracy: Diamond interview on the subjects raised in the book with NPQ, Spring 2005, concentrating on the intersection of politics and environmentalism. One observation by Professor Diamond:

"The historical record, at least, shows no general case for either democracy or dictatorship in terms of curbing environmental damage. The Tokugawa Shoguns made a good decision; the ruling kings of the Maya failed to take action."

• How Societies Fail-And Sometimes Succeed, seminar given in June 2005 at the Long Now Foundation.
• Seminars About Long Term Thinking, The Long Now Foundation
• Learning from Past Societies: The Sustainability Lessons Are There, If Only We Can Find Them – This is an assessment of the process maturity used in Collapse and a similar book, Treading Lightly, to answer their driving questions. The assessment sheds light on the process maturity of any similar effort to solve difficult complex social system problems, particularly the sustainability problem.