Over 10,000 Sm and TB are available so we will provide what you need. Please contact me email:[email protected]. If you are looking for a test bank. Using other people’s research or ideas without giving them due credit is plagiarism. Societal collapse - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Societal collapse is the fall or disintegration of complex human societies. Societal collapse broadly includes abrupt societal failures such as that of the Mayan Civilization, as well as more extended gradual declines of cultures, institutions, or a civilization like the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The general subject arises in anthropology, history, sociology, politics and other fields, and more recently in complex systems science. Causes of collapse. In some cases a natural disaster (e. Other factors such as a Malthusian catastrophe, overpopulation or resource depletion might be the proximate cause of collapse. Significant inequity may combine with lack of loyalty to a central power structure and result in an oppressed lower class rising up and taking power from a smaller wealthy elite. The diversity of forms that societies evolve corresponds to diversity in their failures. Foreign invasions. Throughout the 5th century, the Empire's territories in western Europe and northwestern Africa, including Italy, fell to various invading or indigenous peoples in what is sometimes called the Barbarian invasions, although the eastern half still survived with borders essentially intact for another two centuries (until the Arab expansion). This view of the collapse of the Roman Empire is challenged, however, by modern historians who see Rome as merely transforming from the Western Empire into barbarian kingdoms as the Western Emperors delegated themselves out of existence, and the East transforming into the Byzantine Empire, which only fell in 1. AD. North Africa's populous and flourishing civilization collapsed after exhausting its resources in internal fighting and suffering devastation from the invasion of the Bedouin tribes of Banu Sulaym and Banu Hilal. Later Mongol leaders, such as Timur, though he himself became a Muslim, destroyed many cities, slaughtered thousands of people and did irreparable damage to the ancient irrigation systems of Mesopotamia.
From The Evolution of Civilizations 'Indeed the direction and coordination of scientific activities with respect to world problems requires guidance by persons with a wider perspective than that provided by. These invasions transformed a civil society to a nomadic one. Smallpox ravaged Mexico in the 1. Tenochtitl. The effects of this dispossession is still evident in many of the problems confronting indigenous cultures, including alcoholism, high rates of incarceration, suicide rates and fraternal violence. Sub- replacement fertility. For this evil grew upon us rapidly, and without attracting attention, by our men becoming perverted to a passion for show and money and the pleasures of an idle life, and accordingly either not marrying at all, or, if they did marry, refusing to rear the children that were born, or at most one or two out of a great number, for the sake of leaving them well off or bringing them up in extravagant luxury.? How can the commonwealth be preserved if we neither marry nor produce children? Surely you are not expecting some to spring up from the earth to succeed to your goods and to public affairs, as myths describe. It is neither pleasing to Heaven nor creditable that our race should cease and the name of Romans meet extinguishment in us, and the city be given up to foreigners. We liberate slaves chiefly for the purpose of making out of them as many citizens as possible; we give our allies a share in the government that our numbers may increase: yet you, Romans of the original stock, including Quintii, Valerii, Iulli, are eager that your families and names at once shall perish with you. In cases of collapse, civilizations tend to revert to less complex, less centralized socio- political forms using simpler technology. These are characteristics of a Dark Age. Examples of such societal collapse are: the Hittite Empire, the Mycenaean civilization, the Western Roman Empire, the Mauryan and Gupta Empires in India, the Mayas, the Angkor in Cambodia, and the Han and Tang dynasties in China. Incorporation/Absorption: Alternately, a society may be gradually incorporated into a more dynamic, more complex inter- regional social structure. This happened in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, the Levantine cultures, the Mughal and Delhi Sultanates in India, Sung China, the Aztec culture in Mesoamerica, the Inca culture in South America, and the modern civilizations of China, Japan, and India, as well as many modern states in the Middle East and Africa. Obliteration: Everyone in the society dies. Other changes that may accompany a collapse: Destratification: Complex societies stratified on the basis of class, gender, race or some other salient factor become much more homogeneous or horizontally structured. In many cases past social stratification slowly becomes irrelevant following collapse and societies become more egalitarian. Despecialization: One of the most characteristic features of complex civilizations (and in many cases the yardstick to measure complexity) is a high level of job specialization. The most complex societies are characterized by artisans and tradespeople who specialize intensely in a given task. Indeed, the rulers of many past societies were hyper- specialized priests or priestesses who were completely supported by the work of the lower classes. During societal collapse, the social institutions supporting such specialization are removed and people tend to become more generalized in their work and daily habits. Decentralization: As power becomes decentralized, people tend to be more self- regimented and have many more personal freedoms. In many instances of collapse, there is a slackening of social rules and etiquette. Geographically speaking, communities become more parochial or isolated. For example, following the collapse of the Mayan civilization, many Maya returned to their traditional hamlets, moving away from the large cities that had been the centers of the empire. Destructuralization: Institutions, processes, and artifacts are all manifest in the archaeological record in abundance in large civilizations. After collapse, evidence of epiphenomena, institutions, and types of artifacts change dramatically as people are forced to adopt more self- sufficient lifestyles. Depopulation: Societal collapse is almost always associated with a population decline. In extreme cases, the collapse in population is so severe that the society disappears entirely, such as happened with the Greenland Vikings, or a number of Polynesian islands. In less extreme cases, populations are reduced until a demographic balance is re- established between human societies and the depleted natural environment. A classic example is the case of Ancient Rome, which had a population of about 1. Trajan in the early 2nd century AD, but had only 1. Population dynamics. Organizational adaptability relates importantly to organizational diversity. Several key features of human societal collapse can be related to population dynamics. In his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond proposes five interconnected causes of collapse that may reinforce each other: non- sustainable exploitation of resources, climate changes, diminishing support from friendly societies, hostile neighbors, and inappropriate attitudes for change. However, many primitive cultures also have high degrees of leisure, so if that is a cause in one place it may not be in another. Tainter argues that exceptional productivity is actually more the sign of hidden weakness, both because of a society's dependence on it, and its potential to undermine its own basis for success by not being self limiting as demonstrated in Western culture's ideal of perpetual growth. As a population grows and technology makes it easier to exploit depleting resources, the environment's diminishing returns are hidden from view. Societal complexity is then potentially threatened if it develops beyond what is actually sustainable, and a disorderly reorganization were to follow. The scissors model of Malthusian collapse, where the population grows without limit and resources do not, is the idea of great opposing environmental forces cutting into each other. For the modern world economy, for example, the growing conflict between food and fuel, depending on many of the same finite and diminishing resources is visible in the recent major commodity price shocks. It is one of the key relationships people, since the early studies of the Club of Rome, have been most concerned with. Jared Diamond pursues these themes in his 2. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. This measures the amount of surplus energy a society gets from using energy to obtain energy. There would be no surplus if EROEI approaches 1: 1. What Hall showed is that the real cutoff is well above that, estimated to be 3: 1 to sustain the essential overhead energy costs of a modern society. Part of the mental equation is that the EROEI of our generally preferred energy source, petroleum, has fallen in the past century from 1. An EROEI of more than ~3, then, is what appears necessary to provide the energy for societally important tasks, such as maintaining government, legal and financial institutions, a transportation infrastructure, manufacturing, building construction and maintenance and the life styles of the rich and poor that a society depends on. The EROEI figure also affects the number of people needed for sustainable food production. In the pre- modern world, it was often the case that 8. In modern times, the use of cheap fossil fuels with an exceedingly high EROEI enabled 1. Diminishing EROEI making fuel more expensive relative to other things may require food to be produced using less energy, and so increases the number of people employed in food production again. Models of societal response. They will favor intensification and commit an increasing number of resources to their present plans, projects, and social institutions. The Runaway Train, a society whose continuing function depends on constant growth (cf. Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis): This type of society, based almost exclusively on acquisition (e.
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