Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed cover

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). Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed cover This image is a book cover. ... Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed cover This image is a book cover. ... 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Walk of Ideas (Germany) - built in 2006 to commemorate Johannes Gutenbergs invention, circa 1445, of printing with movable type. ... The University of California, Los Angeles, generally known as UCLA, is a public university whose main campus is located in the affluent Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, United States. ... A professor giving a lecture The meaning of the word professor (Latin: one who claims publicly to be an expert) varies. ... Jared Mason Diamond (born 10 September 1937) is an American evolutionary biologist, physiologist, biogeographer and nonfiction author. ... Societal collapse is the large scale breakdown or long term decline of the culture, civil institutions or other major characteristics of a society or a civilization, on a temporary or permanent basis. ...

Synopsis

In the prologue, Diamond summarizes Collapse in one paragraph, as follows. A pilcrow is used to indicate a paragraph. ...

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. (p. 18)

Diamond says Easter Island provides the best historical example of a societal collapse in isolation.

Collapse is divided into four parts. Image File history File links Easter-island-moai. ... Image File history File links Easter-island-moai. ...

• 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.

This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Human relationships within an ethnically diverse society. ... Variations in CO2, temperature and dust from the Vostok ice core over the last 400 000 years Climate change refers to the variation in the Earths global climate or in regional climates over time. ... A fruit stand at a market. ... motto: ( Rapa Nui ) Also called Te Pito O Te Henua (Ombligo del mundo) (Navel of the world) Discovered by Europeans April 5, 1722 by Jakob Roggeveen Capital Hanga Roa Area  - City Proper  163,6 km² Population  - City (2005)  - Density (city proper) 3. ... Carving from the ridgepole of a Māori house, ca 1840 This article is about the wider region in the Pacific. ... Ancient Pueblo People, or Ancestral Puebloans is the preferred term for the group of peoples often known as Anasazi who are the ancestors of the modern Pueblo peoples. ... The Maya civilization is a Mesoamerican civilization, noted for the only known fully developed written language of the pre-Columbian Americas, as well as its spectacular art, monumental architecture, and sophisticated mathematical and astronomical systems. ... Norsemen is used to refer to the group of people as a whole who speak one of the North Germanic languages as their native language. ... Tikopia is the southernmost of the Santa Cruz Islands, located in the province of Temotu. ... The following text needs to be harmonized with text in the article History of Japan#Edo Period. ... The Rwanda Genocide (French: Génocide au Rwanda) was the massacre of an estimated 800,000 to 1,071,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda, mostly carried out by two extremist Hutu militia groups, the Interahamwe and the Impuzamugambi, during a period of about 100 days from April... Wall Street, Manhattan is the location of the New York Stock Exchange and is often used as a symbol for the world of business. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... The polder model is the Dutch version of corporatism. ...

Reviews

Tim Flannery

Tim Flannery gave Collapse a warm review in Science, writing^[1] Timothy Fridtjof Flannery (born 28 January 1956) is a well-known Australian mammalogist, biologist, writer, Humanist and paleontologist. ... Science is the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). ...

"... 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."

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] The Economist is a weekly news and international affairs publication of The Economist Newspaper Ltd edited in London, UK. It has been in continuous publication since September 1843. ... Look up Future in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A statistic (singular) is the result of applying a statistical algorithm to a set of data. ... A female child during the Nigerian-Biafran war of the late 1960s, shown suffering the effects of severe hunger and malnutrition. ...

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]: The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public university with its main campus located at Point Grey, in the University Endowment Lands adjacent to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and another smaller campus known as UBC Okanagan located in Kelowna, British Columbia. ... A professor giving a lecture The meaning of the word professor (Latin: one who claims publicly to be an expert) varies. ... William Rees is a professor at the University of British Columbia and former director of the School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP) at UBC. Rees has taught at the University of British Columbia since 1969-70. ... This article is about the economist Julian Simon. ... Bjørn Lomborg Bjørn Lomborg (born January 6, 1965) is an Adjunct Professor at the Copenhagen Business School and a former director of the Environmental Assessment Institute in Copenhagen. ... An author is the person who creates a written work, such as a book, story, article or the like. ... The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World (Danish: Verdens Sande Tilstand, literal translation: The Real State of the World) is a controversial book by political scientist Bjørn Lomborg, which argues that claims made about global warming, overpopulation, declining energy resources, deforestation, species loss, water shortages, and...

"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."

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] The Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) is a conservative think tank based in Melbourne, Australia. ...

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] Malcolm Gladwell Malcolm Gladwell (born September 1, 1963) is a United Kingdom-born, Canadian-raised journalist now based in New York City who has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996. ... The New Yorker is an American magazine that publishes reportage, criticism, essays, cartoons, poetry, and fiction. ...

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.

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. History is the study of human affairs through time. ...

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. Arnold Joseph Toynbee (April 14, 1889 - October 22, 1975) was a British historian whose twelve-volume analysis of the rise and fall of civilizations, A Study of History, 1934-1961, was a synthesis of world history, a metahistory based on universal rhythms of rise, flowering and decline. ... A Study of History is the 12-volume magnum opus of British historian Arnold J. Toynbee, finished in 1961. ... 1934 (MCMXXXIV) was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1961 (MCMLXI) was a common year starting on Sunday (the link is to a full 1961 calendar). ...

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. Joseph Tainter is a U.S. anthropologist and historian whose best-known work is The Collapse of Complex Societies. ... 1988 (MCMLXXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... In economics, diminishing returns is the short form of diminishing marginal returns. ...

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

Malcolm Gladwell Malcolm Gladwell (born September 1, 1963) is a United Kingdom-born, Canadian-raised journalist now based in New York City who has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996. ... The New Yorker is an American magazine that publishes reportage, criticism, essays, cartoons, poetry, and fiction. ...

References

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

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.

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies cover Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies is a 1997 book by Jared Diamond, professor of physiology at UCLA. It won the Pulitzer Prize for 1998, as well as the Aventis Prize for best science book in the... A Study of History is the 12-volume magnum opus of British historian Arnold J. Toynbee, finished in 1961. ... Arnold Joseph Toynbee (April 14, 1889 - October 22, 1975) was a British historian whose twelve-volume analysis of the rise and fall of civilizations, A Study of History, 1934-1961, was a synthesis of world history, a metahistory based on universal rhythms of rise, flowering and decline. ... Joseph Tainter is a U.S. anthropologist and historian whose best-known work is The Collapse of Complex Societies. ... This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedias deletion policy. ... Romulus Augustus was deposed as Western Roman Emperor in 476 while still young. ...

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.