The Recurring Dark Ages: Ecological Stress, Climate Changes, and System Transformation

by Sing C. Chew

Overview

In this modern era of global environmental crisis, Sing Chew provides a convincing analysis of the recurring human and environmental crises identified as Dark Ages. In this, his second of a three-volume series concerning world ecological degradation, Chew reviews the past 5,000-year history of structural conditions and processes that define the relationship between nature and culture. Chew's message about the coming Dark Ages, as human communities continue to reorganize to meet the contingencies of ecological scarcity and climate changes, is a must-read for those concerned with human interactions and environmental changes, including environmental anthropologists and historians, world historians, geographers, archaeologists, and environmental scientists.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780759104518
Publisher:	AltaMira Press
Publication date:	12/19/2006
Series:	World Ecological Degradation Series
Pages:	314
Product dimensions:	6.09(w) x 9.39(h) x 0.98(d)

About the Author

Sing C. Chew is research scientist in the Department of Urban and Environmental Sociology, UFZ Centre for Environmental Research, Leipzig-Halle, Leipzig, Germany; professor of sociology at Humboldt State University, Arcata, California; and founding editor of the interdisciplinary journal, Nature and Culture.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Preface Part 2 I.The Dark Ages over World History Chapter 3 1 System Crisis Part 4 II.The Crisis of the Bronze Age Chapter 5 2 Nature and Culture Chapter 6 3 Ecological Crisis and System Transformation Part 7 III.The Crisis of Antiquity Chapter 8 4 Intensification of Natural and Social Systems Relations Chapter 9 5 A Period of Darkness Part 10 IV. System Transformation Chapter 11 6 From the Past to the Future: Whither System Transformation? Chapter 13 Appendix 1: Arboreal Pollen Influxes Chapter 14 Appendix 2: Plantago Pollen Influxes Chapter 15 Appendix 3: Arboreal and NonArboreal Pollen Influxes Percentages

Editorial Reviews

The world system has evolved and continues to do so. The question is what drives this evolutionary process. Sing Chew has developed a substantial argument built around intermittent and, hitherto, poorly understood Dark Ages. Chew shines an analytical light on the phases of deterioration that we usually ignore while favoring the periods of growth and expansion. Yet it is unlikely that you can have one without the other.

William Thompson

This could be a fascinating romp through world history; each chapter whizzes across space and time in lightening fashion....The strength of this approach is the way it synthesizes and presents so much information about the ingenuity of diverse communities and their efforts to produce and trade across large distances and on changing ecological terrains, and it does so with a novel and persuasive analytic frame.

Contemporary Sociology

Recurring Dark Ages takes ecological disasters based on systematic long-term overexploitation back to the beginnings of urban life and early industrialization in the Bronze Age. Sing Chew thus situates Dark Ages in a long-term historical perspective linked to the operation of an ancient world system. The book provides an original historical framework for understanding Dark Ages past and present.

Kristian Kristiansen

Sing Chew offers groundbreaking insights for anyone seeking help in understanding the uneven course of the history of human culture in the context of nature. By a fine analysis of the times often discounted in world histories, Sing Chew provides a masterful new way of seeing the import of the interaction of human societies and the forces of the natural world.

J Donald Hughes

Dr. Chew's long awaited sequel to World Ecological Degradation provides the reader with new insights on the contemporary environmental crisis by providing a broad, long-range perspective on the interactions between natural changes and cultural changes. Interdisciplinary in scope, rich in theory and data, The Recurring Dark Ages helps the reader understand globalization in historical perspective.

Bill Devall

Dr. Chew's long awaited sequel to World Ecological Degradation provides the reader with new insights on the contemporary environmental crisis by providing a broad, long-range perspective on the interactions between natural changes and cultural changes. Interdisciplinary in scope, rich in theory and data, The Recurring Dark Ages helps the reader understand globalization in historical perspective.--Bill Devall, author, Deep Ecology and Living Richly in an Age of Limits

Sing Chew offers groundbreaking insights for anyone seeking help in understanding the uneven course of the history of human culture in the context of nature. By a fine analysis of the times often discounted in world histories, Sing Chew provides a masterful new way of seeing the import of the interaction of human societies and the forces of the natural world.--J Donald Hughes, University of Denver, and editor, The Face of the Earth

Recurring Dark Ages takes ecological disasters based on systematic long-term overexploitation back to the beginnings of urban life and early industrialization in the Bronze Age. Sing Chew thus situates Dark Ages in a long-term historical perspective linked to the operation of an ancient world system. The book provides an original historical framework for understanding Dark Ages past and present.--Kristian Kristiansen, Goteborgs Universitet; coauthor with Thomas B. Larsson, The Rise of Bronze Age Society

From the Publisher