Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed cover Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed is the title of a 2004 English-language book by University of California, Los Angeles geography professor Jared M. Diamond. Diamond wrote a fuller title would be "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). Diamond ostensibly wrote the book so its readers could learn from history (p. 23).
Synopsis
Collapse is divided into four parts. Part One of the book focuses on events in Montana. Part Two describes past societies that did collapse. Part Three examines modern societies. Part Four, which considers such subjects as business and globalization, "extracts practical lessons for us today" (p. 22 – 23). In the book, Diamond uses a "five-point framework" when considering the collapse of a society. The five-point framework consists five "sets of factors": environmental damage, climatic change, hostile neighbors, friendly trade partners, and the society's responses to its environmental problems.
In the prologue (p. 18), Diamond previews 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 instead of 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 am to tease out the influence of possible input variables on collapses.
Reviews
Tim Flannery
Tim Flannery (as cited in "References") gave Collapse a warm review in Science, writing
- 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 (as cited in "References") was generally favorable, although the anonymous reviewer had two disagreements. Firstly, the reviewer felt Diamond was too optimistic about the future. Secondly, the reviewer claimed Collapse contains erroneous statistics. For instance, Diamond supposedly overstated the amount of starving people in the world.
William Rees
University of British Columbia professor of ecological planning William Rees (as cited in "References") wrote 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 pratices favorable to their own survival and avoid unfavorable ones. Moreoever, Rees wrote that Collapse is "a necessary antidote" to followers of Julian Lincoln Simon, such as Bjørn Lomborg who authored The Skeptical Environmentalist. Rees explained this assertion as follows.
- 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.
References
- Of porpoises and plantations. (2005, January 15). In The Economist, 374, 76.
- Flannery, T. (2005, January 7). Learning from the past to change our future. In Science, 307, 45.
- Rees, W. (2005, January 6). Contemplating the abyss. In Nature, 433, 15 – 16.
See also
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