1st Edition

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

Edited By Alf Hornborg, Carole L Crumley Copyright 2006
    407 Pages
    by Routledge

    407 Pages
    by Routledge

    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.

    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

    Biography

    Hornborg, Alf; Crumley, Carole L