Collapse (book)

Date: Published 2005

Author: Jared Diamond (1937– )

Background

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed was published in 2005 by Jared Diamond, who previously won the Pulitzer Prize for Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies in 1998. An updated version of Collapse was published in 2011. Diamond’s central theme is that environmental mismanagement and failure to confront emerging environmental problems had repeatedly led to the collapse of societies, even when the problems were obvious.

Collapse consists of four parts. Part 1 examines contemporary Montana, which saw the collapse of once-lucrative industries like mining and logging, and which is struggling with the need to adapt to change while grappling with ingrained hostility toward regulation and restraints on individual freedom. Part 2 is an examination of historical examples of societal collapse: Easter Island and other Polynesian examples, the Anasazi of the American Southwest, the Maya, and the Norse settlements in Iceland and Greenland. Diamond describes two contrasting paths taken by successful societies, the decentralized approach of New Guinea tribal societies and the top-down style of Japan under the Tokugawa regime (1603–1867). Part 3 is a study of several contemporary societies: Rwanda, the contrasting examples of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, China, and Australia. Finally, in Part 4, Diamond attempts to catalog the reasons some societies fail to respond to environmental threats, discusses the environmental practices of several large industries, and finally attempts to apply his analysis to contemporary society. Although Diamond is critical of many Western attitudes and practices, the tone of the book is not apocalyptic. In fact, it closes on a cautiously hopeful note by enumerating ways that modern societies have deliberately changed.

Diamond asserts that there are five main factors for the decline of the civilizations he studied for his book: deforestation, greater climate variability, hostile neighbors, new opportunities for trade, and mismanagement of water systems that are further impacted by droughts and floods. Societies may fail to deal with environmental threats on this list for many reasons. They may not recognize the threat. The problem may be recognized, but attempts to solve it may be inappropriate. There may be no attempts to solve the problem because certain interest groups may be adversely affected by the solution, the benefits of solving the problem may not seem to outweigh the costs, or the problem may be seen as diffuse or remote. Some environments, like Greenland or the American Southwest, may simply be unsuited for intensive human use. In contrast to errors that can be termed “rational,” that is, attempts to cope with problems using what seems to be sound reasoning and methods, Diamond discusses “irrational failures,” courses of action that are harmful to all. For example, many of the collapses discussed by Diamond were driven in part by maintaining the status of ruling elites or unwillingness to abandon cultural prejudices.

Significance for Climate Change

Several of the collapses discussed by Diamond were related directly to climate change, particularly the Anasazi, the classical Maya, and the Norse of Greenland. None of those societies was scientifically capable of recognizing the change in time or devising suitable strategies for coping with it. The relevance of Collapse is not in its use of past case studies of climate change but its discussion of ways that societies have dealt with environmental degradation and either averted catastrophe or succumbed to it. Many of the patterns Diamond discusses can be seen at work in the climate change controversy.

Societies may be unaware of an emerging problem because the onset of the problem is gradual, like the deteriorating climate of Norse Greenland. The onset of the problem may also be concealed by short-term random fluctuations, like the intermittent droughts that led to the collapse of Anasazi and Classical Maya societies, which were interspersed with more normal years. In contemporary Western society, skeptics point to unusually cold episodes as evidence against climate change, while believers point to increasingly frequent evidence of warming. The “noisiness” of climate data is a major reason climate change is so controversial.

Environmental problems may be recognized but attempts to solve them may be inappropriate—for example, the introduction of exotic species to control pests or total fire suppression in the American West. Similarly, some proposals for dealing with climate change may have unintended negative effects. Other attempted solutions may be costly but ineffective, impairing economic productivity and quality of life but not appreciably affecting climate change. There may be no attempts to solve the problem because certain interest groups may be adversely affected by the solution or because the problem is seen as diffuse or remote.

Many of the choices made by failed societies involve deep internal conflicts—for example, immediate survival needs versus long-term survival needs, or survival needs versus other deeply held values. Some of the collapses discussed by Diamond were partly caused by practices for maintaining the status of ruling elites, such as the way Easter Island society collapsed because resources were exhausted in building progressively larger statues in a prestige race among chiefs. Other fatal decisions involved unwillingness to abandon cultural prejudices. For example, the Norse settlements in Greenland died out because the Norse never adopted Inuit survival techniques, even as the climate deteriorated. Diamond notes that many of the values societies are most reluctant to change are often the very values that made the society successful in the past. These examples may have parallels in contemporary society, where much of the opposition to the idea of climate change is motivated by concern over impacts on lifestyle and where environmentally inefficient choices such as overly large homes and vehicles are often motivated by desire for social status.

Jared Diamond offers an update to Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeedon his website, jareddiamond.org. These extensions to his previous research are included in the book's updated 2011 edition. Diamond recognizes that new evidence has been published concerning the widespread felling and burning of trees on Easter Island before the arrival of Europeans. He also acknowledges increasing evidence that severe droughts contributed to the decline of Mayan cities. Finally, the biggest recent advance since the book's original publication is the understanding of the functional purpose of the reservoirs of the Khmer Empire based at Angkor.

Since the original publishing of Collapse, Diamond has published Natural Experiments of History (2010) and The World until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies (2012).

Bibliography

Brackenbury, Andrew. “Humans: Next on the Endangered List.” Geographical 78.4 (2006): 62–66. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 20 Mar. 2015.

Coker, Jennifer R. “Jared Diamond.” Guide to Literary Masters & Their Works. Ipswich: Salem, 2007. Biography Reference Center. Web. 20 Mar. 2015.

"Collapse by Jared Diamond - Reading Guide: PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books." Penguin Random House, www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/288954/collapse-by-jared-diamond/9780143117001/readers-guide/. Accessed 10 Jan. 2023.

"Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed." Jared Diamond, /www.jareddiamond.org/Jared‗Diamond/Collapse.html. Accessed 10 Jan. 2023.

De Menocal, Peter B., et al. “Perspectives on Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.” Current Anthropology 46 (2005): S91–S99. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 20 Mar. 2015.

Gladwell, Malcolm. “The Vanishing.” Rev. of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, by Jared Diamond. New Yorker 80.41 (2005): 70–73. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 20 Mar. 2015.

Lynas, Mark. “Trouble Ahead.” Rev. of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, by Jared Diamond. New Statesman 134.4726 (2005): 50–51. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 20 Mar. 2015.

"My Books." Jared Diamond, www.jareddiamond.org/Jared‗Diamond/My‗Books.html. Accessed 10 Jan. 2023.