The World System and the Earth System: Global Socioenvironmental Change and Sustainability Since the Neolithic

by Alf Hornborg (Editor), Carole L Crumley (Editor)

Overview

In this benchmark volume top scholars come together to present state-of-the-art research and pursue a more rigorous framework for understanding and studying the linkages between social and ecological systems. Contributors from a wide spectrum of disciplines, including archaeology, anthropology, geography, ecology, palaeo-science, geology, sociology, and history, present and assess both the evolution of our thinking and current, state-of-the-art theory and research. Covering ancient through modern periods, they discuss the complex ways in which human culture, economy, and demographics interact with ecology and climate change. The World System and the Earth System is critical reading for all scholars and students working at the interface of nature and society.Contributors: Thomas Abel, Björn Berglund, Chris Chase-Dunn, Alfred Crosby, Carole L. Crumley, John Dearing, Bert de Vries, Nina Eisenmenger, Andre Gunder Frank, Jonathan Friedman, Stefan Giljum, Thomas Hall, Karin Holmgren, Alf Hornborg, Kristian Kristiansen, Thomas Malm, Daniel Mandell, Betty Meggers, George Modelski, Emilio Moran, Helena Öberg, Frank Oldfield, Susan Stonich, William Thompson, Peter Turchin.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781598741018
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	11/15/2006
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	407
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Hornborg, Alf; Crumley, Carole L

Table of Contents

Preface, Contributors, Introduction: Conceptualizing Socioecological Systems, Part I: Modeling Socioecological Systems: General Perspectives, 1. Historical Ecology: Integrated Thinking at Multiple Temporal and Spatial Scales, 2. Toward Developing Synergistic Linkages between the Biophysical and the Cultural: A Palaoenvironmental Perspective, 3. Integration of World and Earth Systems: Heritage and Foresight, 4. World-Systems as Complex Human Ecosystems, 5. Lessons from Population Ecology for World-Systems Analyses of Long-Distance Synchrony, 6. Sustainable Unsustainability: Toward a Comparative Study of Hegemonic Decline in Global Systems, Part II: Case Studies of Socioenvironmental Change in Prehistory, 7. Agrarian Landscape Development in Northwestern Europe since the Neolithic: Cultural and Climatic Factors behind a Regional/Continental Pattern, 8. Climate Change in Southern and Eastern Africa during the Past Millennium and Its Implications for Societal Development, 9. World-Systems in the Biogeosphere: Urbanization, State Formation, and Climate Change Since the Iron Age, 10. Eurasian Transformations: Mobility, Ecological Change, and the Transmission of Social Institutions in the Third Millennium and the Early Second Millennium B.C.E., 11. Climate, Water, and Political-Economic Crises in Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, 12. Ages of Reorganization, 13. Sustainable Intensive Exploitation of Amazonia: Cultural, Environmental, and Geopolitical Perspectives, 14. Regional Integration and Ecology in Prehistoric Amazonia: Toward a System Perspective, Part III: Is the World System Sustainable? Attempts toward an Integrated Socioecological Perspective, 15. The Human–Environment Nexus: Progress in the Past Decade in the Integrated Analysis of Human and Biophysical Factors, 16. In Search of Sustainability: What Can We Learn from the Past?, 17. Political Ecology and Sustainability Science: Opportunity and Challenge, 18. No Island is an “Island”: Some Perspectives on Human Ecology and Development in Oceania, 19. Infectious Diseases as Ecological and Historical Phenomena, with Special Reference to the Influenza Pandemic of 1918–1919, 20. Evidence from Societal Metabolism Studies for Ecological Unequal Trade, 21. Entropy Generation and Displacement: The Nineteenth-Century Multilateral Network of World Trade, References, Index

Editorial Reviews

"The volume must be read by anyone interested in the human-environmental connection. Spanning the local, social, and global, back into prehistory and onward to the future, it brings the weight of history and the wisdom of experience to bear on the problems that most threaten our future."

—Fakhry A. Assaad, Environmental Geology

"This is both an exciting and rewarding book. What unites the authors is their willingness to test the hypothesis that the biophysical earth systems and the historical social world systems ultimately form a single inseparable whole, whose mode of operation needs to be elucidated."
—Immanuel Wallerstein, Yale University

"The fruit of an unprecedented gathering of a veritable pageant of luminaries in the human and natural sciences, this book charts a new synthesis. It must be read by anyone interested in the human-environmental connection. Spanning the local, social, and global, back into prehistory and onward to the future, it is the approach we need at this time, when the challenges of global environmental problems cannot be met with the status quo. It brings the weight of history and the wisdom of experience to bear on the problems that most threaten our future."

—Richard Wilk, Indiana University

"The World System and the Earth System offers a critical perspective on large-scale environmental change in an era when we are awakening to the phenomenon of global warming. This work is notable for bringing together long-term environmental systems research with its social scientific equivalent, world-systems analysis, a novel and powerful synthesis."

—Josiah Heyman, University of Texas at El Paso

"This volume is a long overdue synthesis of our understanding of the human-environment relationship at the global scale. The study of socio-ecological systems at local scales is making progress in understanding the critical issues of resilience and sustainability. However, it is at the scale of the Earth as a whole where the collision between humans and environment is being played out in its most dramatic form, with the future of the planetary life support system in the balance. Learning from the rich record of socio-ecological change in the past is a strong feature of the volume, but its interest and value are not limited to this. In the present era where a rapidly globalising human enterprise has become a geophysical force impacting the functioning of the Earth System itself, it is impressive to see that this book takes on the ultimate question: 'Are World-Systems Sustainable?'"

—Will Steffen, Australian National University

From the Publisher