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Questioning Collapse challenges those scholars and popular writers who advance the thesis that societies - past and present - collapse because of behavior that destroyed their environments or because of overpopulation. In a series of highly accessible and closely argued essays, a team of internationally recognized scholars bring history and context to bear in their radically different analyses of iconic events, such as the deforestation of Easter Island, the cessation of the Norse colony in Greenland, the faltering of nineteenth-century China, the migration of ancestral peoples away from Chaco Canyon in the American southwest, the crisis and resilience of Lowland Maya kingship, and other societies that purportedly "collapsed." Collectively, these essays demonstrate that resilience in the face of societal crises, rather than collapse, is the leitmotif of the human story from the earliest civilizations to the present. Scrutinizing the notion that Euro-American colonial triumphs were an accident of geography, Questioning Collapse also critically examines the complex historical relationship between race and political labels of societal "success" and "failure."
- Sales Rank: #617032 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Cambridge University Press
- Published on: 2009-09-28
- Released on: 2009-11-26
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.98" h x .79" w x 5.98" l, 1.15 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 392 pages
- Used Book in Good Condition
Review
"This is a truly impressive book of scholarship, but also an important book politically. It deals with a public debate: 'how susceptible are societies, including our own, to collapse?' A fully global set of in-depth studies demonstrates convincingly the remarkable sustainability of human groups. While societies change, they rarely disappear, however much dominant groups might wish them to."
Ian Hodder, Stanford University
"This wide-ranging collection of articles written by prominent historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists provides a highly accessible, stimulating and valuable corrective to simplistic popular accounts on why certain societies have failed, while others succeeded. A dozen case studies, covering societies as diverse as Norse Greenland, Rapa Nui, late imperial China, Classic to Post-Classic Maya, Iron Age Mesopotamia, and contemporary Rwanda and Haiti, critique the concept that societies have catastrophically collapsed due to decisions taken that were not sustainable and that led inexorably to over-population and environmental degradation. Rather, the societies covered here exhibited considerable resilience or the ability to adapt to new circumstances; many lasted for centuries, or, in other words, for far longer than other societies deemed successful by J. Diamond in his recent best-selling study Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. The authors argue persuasively for a richer consideration of the historical, political, cultural and, today, global contexts in which each society emerged and developed. Most importantly, they insist that societies are not wholes, making decisions that determine their collective fates, but rather are made up of separate factions or interest groups, with differential access to power and the ability to promote their own agendas. The more complex accounts of societal "collapse" presented here ultimately make it easier for us to discern what is truly unique and frightening about our current susceptibility to global environmental collapse."
Philip L. Kohl, Professor of Anthropology, Kathryn W. Davis Professor of Slavic Studies, Wellesley College
"This collection should be required reading for all enthusiasts of Jared Diamond's Collapse. Pointing out that societal "collapse" is extremely rare, the editors argue that most human societies have shown remarkable resilience, even in the face of environmental challenges. In clear, accessible language, the contributors to this volume - all experts in their fields - marshal the most recent research to show how Diamond read selectively, mischaracterized, or misunderstood the specific histories of Easter Island, Norse Greenland, the Puebloan Southwest, the Classic Maya, and modern Haiti and Rwanda, among others. The organization of this volume echoes Diamond's, closing with a remarkable essay by Errington and Gewertz on the necessity for anthropologically-informed understandings of both ourselves and others. The result is an alternative - and powerfully compelling - take on Diamond's popular work and a striking example of what scholars can, and should, do in presenting their work to the public."
Kathleen D. Morrison, Professor of Anthropology, Director, Center for International Studies, University of Chicago
"Once in a while, a book comes along that should be read by everyone interested in the really BIG questions of human history. HERE IT IS. In the pages of Questioning Collapse, McAnany, Yoffee and a host of distinguished historians and archaeologists answer the question "How do societies collapse?" by changing the question. Societies don't "fail," at least not in the way that naïve popular writers have recently claimed. Ranging from ancient China and Mesopotamia to Chaco Canyon and Easter Island, the authors of this book drive nail upon nail into the coffin of simplistic, NON-HISTORICAL readings of global history. This book will stand for years as a benchmark from which we can ponder our shared past and forecast the world's future."
Tim Pauketat, University of Illinois, Urbana- Champaign
"The authors contribute positively to critical public discussions about understanding what the past has to offer us as we move toward an increasingly global, environmentally fragile future. Their chapters were written for the wider public rather than being narrowly focused at specialists and yet also have much of value for professionals in the authors' disciplines." -Krista Lewis, Science
About the Author
Patricia A. McAnany is Kenan Eminent Professor in the anthropology department at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. A member of the editorial board of the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, she has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Dumbarton Oaks, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. She is the principal investigator of the Xibun Archaeological Research Project in Belize (www.bu.edu/tricia) and of the Maya Area Cultural Heritage Initiative (www.machiproject.org) that works with descendent Maya communities. She has authored Living with the Ancestors: Kinship and Kingship in Ancient Maya Society, edited K'axob: Ritual, Work and Family in an Ancient Maya Village, and recently co-edited Dimensions of Ritual Economy.
Norman Yoffee is a scholar of ancient Mesopotamia and social evolutionary and anthropological theory. He teaches in the Departments of Near Eastern Studies and Anthropology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is the author and editor of eleven books, including Myths of the Archaic State: Evolution of the Earliest Cities, States, and Civilizations, Excavating Asian History: Interdisciplinary Studies in History and Archaeology and Negotiating the Past in the Past: Identity, Memory, and Landscape in Archaeological Research, and the Cambridge World Archaeology series.
Most helpful customer reviews
158 of 168 people found the following review helpful.
A weak rebuttal of Diamond's 'Collapse' but it does raise important issues.
By Allen B. Hundley
I placed an order for"Questioning Collapse" as soon as I heard about it and before its release date because I expected a spirited and well reasoned challenge to Jared Diamond's best selling "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed." The critique leaves something to be desired but the essays by Norman Yoffee and by Errington and Gewertz bring my rating up to 4 stars.
In the interest of full disclosure this reviewer worked as a technical consultant in a number of the countries covered in these books, and in others, many of which by any reasonable standard would be judged as either failed states or close to it. This includes three months near the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, five months working with the few journalists in Rwanda who survived the 1994 genocide, almost a year with native people in Honduras, and with farmers, both Latino and Mayan, in the Yucatan. I am neither an archaeologist nor an anthropologist but mine is more than armchair analysis. Now happily retired I have no professional reputation to defend, no books to sell, no political agenda to push, and most assuredly zero tolerance for political correctness.
Two themes dominate "Questioning Collapse": Diamond is wrong to charge that societies destroy themselves by despoiling their environment, and the whole idea of collapse is overblown because societies rarely if ever collapse. They just become more simple in their political and economic structure.
The contributors seem intent on disproving Diamond's claims regarding the role environmental impact has played in societal collapse. Their evidence may have some validity but it seems to me that they are avoiding far more important questions like the appropriate level of analysis, society or civilization, Joseph Tainter's view notwithstanding.
Diamond never claims that environmental degradation is the sole cause of a society's failure. Other factors including geography and history also play a role. Where he does point to overpopulation as a central cause, as in the Rwanda genocide of 1994, his documentation is detailed and powerful.
In contrast Christopher Taylor's essay "Rwandan Genocide: Toward an Explanation in Which History and Culture Matter" merely presents some personal narrative, historical background and points to corrupt and manipulative politicians as key culprits. But both the background and the politicians have already been covered in detail by Diamond.
(Sadly Radio Rwanda played a key role in orchestrating the genocide. That aspect of the tragedy contrasts so dramatically with the extraordinary heroism of June Keithly and Radio Veritas in the Philippines, whose broadcasts enabled General Ramos to rally dissident military elements to overthrow dictator Marcos and prevent a mass slaughter of civilians during the 1986 People Power revolution.)
Drexel Woodson, a specialist in Haiti, seeks to counter what he considers to be Diamond's misleading comparison of the two countries with a long recitation of Haitian history and politics. In the end I am at a loss to see what that adds to understanding why Haiti is a wasteland with only 1% forested while the DR is 28% forested. Both countries had foreign occupations and many dictators but at least the DR had a few leaders like Juan Balaguer who cared about more than just enriching themselves and their cronies. The same cannot be said of Haiti and that is Diamond's point.
My point is that in the modern world technology, culture, and individuals interact to alter the course of history for better or for worse. Perhaps Diamond, the contributors to this book, and your reviewer can all agree on that.
The book's editors contend that societies do not really collapse, they just adjust to new circumstances. The fact is that today's Maya are now marginalized people at the bottom of societies that generally treat them with condescension if not contempt. In their heyday the Maya were the world leaders in astronomy, capable of organizing the vast resources needed to build complex and magnificent temples. Today's pathetic remnant is not even a shadow of those glorious days. Societies may survive in a primitive condition but civilizations do indeed collapse. But of course this would represent a bias toward the values of contemporary western civilization according to Errington and Gewertz. If so, I plead guilty.
A specialist in Mesopotamia, Norman Yoffee says that while there is little evidence that environmental impact caused the collapse of ancient societies there is plenty of evidence that foolish rulers did. "Furthermore, we can demonstrate how arrogant decisions by mighty leaders led to overextension and the fall of their states. If one 'rule' of political stability/instability can be risked, it is that the more centralized the government, the larger the bureaucracy, and the larger the army in a state, the less stable is the government and the more drastic and comprehensive is the fall of the state." (p.182).
Yoffee writes, "Although Diamond declared that we can't understand why the Soviet Union collapsed by looking at the past, it is just the kind of collapse of an enormous empire that we CAN compare with what happened, for example, in the Assyrian empire in Mesopotamia." (p.178). He then describes how increasing centralization of government power by a succession of Assyrian kings led ultimately to disaster so complete for the Assyrian state that it never recovered.
I wish Yoffee had written more about the demise of the Soviet Union and how it compares with its ancient predecessors . Like Joseph Tainter's prescient observations about our current civilization in his classic "The Collapse of Complex Societies", that would make for some interesting reading.
74 of 84 people found the following review helpful.
An important complement to Jared Diamond's Collapse
By a.
Here are some basic observations about what this book is and is not:
It is an edited volume of essays by various authors.
It is not only about Collapse, but also about Guns, Germs, and Steel.
It is less about Collapse and Guns, Germs, and Steel, than it is about (1) the issues and case studies addressed by Diamond in those books, and (2) the ways in which Diamond addresses those issues and case studies.
Surprisingly, it is not dry or difficult to read, in fact if anything it is even more readable and engaging than Diamond's books (which have been praised for these very reasons).
Here is why so many reviewers, myself included, have found themselves exasperated and even angered by this book:
The essays collected in Questioning Collapse generally do not offer careful readings of Diamond's arguments. Some of the authors even take, at times, a rather unscholarly and strident tone. Some of the authors seem unfamiliar with the scholarly, or at least logical, principle, that good reading must be (among other things) both fair and charitable. This is especially perplexing because all the authors in this book seem to have the same overall goals and concerns as Diamond, as the book's introductory chapter points out.
Here is why this book gets five stars:
Its shortcomings aside, Questioning Collapse does offer detailed accounts and analyses of many of the historical events that Diamond has written on.
The authors of each essay, unlike Diamond, have specialized and done primary research on the societies that each writes about.
Most of Diamond's sources in Collapse (I imagine this is also the case for Guns, Germs, and Steel) are not primary but secondary sources. Not that there is anything wrong with secondary sources. However, of necessity they leave out most of the information to be found in the relevant primary sources. They also add a further layer of interpretation to the primary sources, which is problematic if one is not familiar with the primary sources as well. But perhaps the biggest problem with Diamond's over-reliance on secondary sources is that they lag, again of necessity, far behind the current state of knowledge in a given field. The reader of Questioning Collapse will find specific examples where these gaps and lags in knowledge, allegedly, massively impair Diamond's historical reconstructions.
The historical reconstructions in Questioning Collapse are far more cautious than those of written by Diamond. That is, they are far more honest about what is not known, what is highly conjectural, etc. They are also far more explicit about why they think that one hypothesis seems more likely than another.
The essays in Questioning Collapse are generally far more cautious about projecting modern, and modern western, concerns and values onto times and places where those concerns and values may have been significantly different (in ways that are relevant to the questions at hand). They are also careful not to project the technical and political capabilities of the modern world onto the non-modern world. This is also one of the criticisms of Diamond's work: that it sometimes inappropriately makes these projections, and that these errors impair his analyses. Very specific examples are given, along with counter-narratives that (it is claimed) do not make the same errors.
Another shortcoming of Diamond's work is that it fails to adequately take into account factors such as "ideology" (i.e. belief-and-value systems), political-economic factors that are external to a society and yet control its course, and historical factors where past events unique to a given society continue to determine its present course and dynamics. Again, detailed examples from the authors' area of expertise and field research are provided.
The examples and narratives in Questioning Collapse all concern the events that Diamond writes about. They thus provide a different version and a different analysis of what happened. For one who has read both Diamond's work and Questioning Collapse, the tension between these perspectives, reconstructions, and analyses, should provide them with an opportunity for far more critical [critical in a good way] and informed reflections on the problems collapse, decline, etc.
In the end, this book neither refutes nor really even rebuts Diamond's work, but complements and continues it, albeit by way of critique. As a supplement, it most certainly changes that to which it is added. It probably could have been done better, and hopefully someone else will take up the challenge of doing so. Even so, Questioning Collapse is an important (and, quite honestly, a highly entertaining) read.
In connection with this book and with Jared Diamond's work, I also recommend the following: The Environment in Anthropology: A Reader in Ecology, Culture, and Sustainable Living, and Anthropology and Contemporary Human Problems.
80 of 92 people found the following review helpful.
Missed the point
By Big Jon
The authors of this book are responding to Diamond's popular book "Collapse". They seem be quibbling about minor details while missing the entire point of Diamond's book.
From chapter 1 "Why we question collapse", the authors challenge minor points in Diamond's books (perhaps because he is not an anthropologist or historian by profession?) They claim to prefer the term "Resilance" to "collapse" because there were always some survivors in every case of societal collapse. They also don't seem to like the word "failed" when applied to a state. It seems to me that any society which breaks down into starvation and cannibalism can probably safely be called a failure....even if the society has lasted 500 years before it fails...but that's just me.
They also miss or ignore a LOT of Diamond's logical qualifiers. He sprinkles his work with phrases like "may have", "could have been" and "I believe" when weaving a story of the past and then usually takes a step back and says "But whatever the specific causes were, these were the results". I don't find any fault with this type of writing. Whether the trees on Easter Island were destroyed by humans or Rats is irrelevant. The standard of living and capabilities of the population dropped sharply as a result of deforestation.
The fact that people survived is largely irrelevant to the discussion. In every case Diamond uses as a negative example, the culture was impossible to continue and had to change sharply (and often very quickly) as a result of environmental degradation. During these changes, undoubtedly many people died, sometimes horribly. I found myself wondering if the esteemed authors of this book would have been among the survivors. They seem able to brush off and ignore civil wars, famine and cannibalism fairly easily from the distance of a few centuries and from their comfy libraries.
The point they are missing is this: Societies are vulnerable to stresses caused by overpopulation, environmental disaster, enemies, trade partner troubles and a host of other things. The choices made by the society sometimes mitigates these problems. Mankind's power to destroy his environment is greater than it was in the past, but so is his knowledge and power to prevent it. That's all.
LATER Revised review:
After receiving a helpful comment on this review, I have upgraded the overall rating on this book. Perhaps my original rating was unfairly low. I was annoyed by the book when I wrote the original.
The book stands alone as a good, scholarly work.
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