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Questioning Collapse: Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability, and the Aftermath of Empire
Questioning Collapse challenges those scholars and popular writers who advance the thesis that societies – past and present – collapse because of behavior that destroyed their environments or because of overpopulation. In a series of highly accessible and closely argued essays, a team of internationally recognized scholars bring history and context to bear in their radically different analyses of iconic events, such as the deforestation of Easter Island, the cessation of the Norse colony in Greenland, the faltering of nineteenth-century China, the migration of ancestral peoples away from Chaco Canyon in the American southwest, the crisis and resilience of Lowland Maya kingship, and other societies that purportedly “collapsed.” Collectively, these essays demonstrate that resilience in the face of societal crises, rather than collapse, is the leitmotif of the human story from the earliest civilizations to the present. Scrutinizing the notion that Euro-American colonial triumphs were an accident of geography, Questioning Collapse also critically examines the complex historical relationship between race and political labels of societal “success” and “failure.”
390 pages, Hardcover
First published September 28, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
July 19, 2016
I don't want to dismiss this book too hastily, for they do make a lot of nice points that are worth stating. It's true that history is a complex, fuzzy thing and no one understands it well enough to be *too* confident making grand theories. It's true that Jared Diamond could probably have spent more time acknowledging the limitations of his theories, the complications involved, the existence of descendants from the collapsed societies he studies and their complex relationships with the modern world, and above all the factors of oppression involved in the modern distribution of wealth and power.
That said, however, I found this book to be somewhat incoherent, often baffling, and full of special pleading. For one thing, the overall message was scattered because the authors never attempted to replace Diamond's environmental determinist thesis with an explanation of their own. The conclusion was rather that the matter is simply too complex for general explanations that can be abstracted out of context. This may be true, but it is not the feeling many anthropologists seem to have, largely because it is not very useful assumption on which to predicate investigations of cause and effect (ie, explanations and predictions - the very stuff of science). I interpret this as an unfortunate damage-control response to the perceived widespread belief in Diamond's popular thesis, which they see as overly simplistic. Since they fail to advance any argument of their own (other than "it's complicated") the evidence each essay provides about its own case study often feels superfluous and irrelevant.
An even stranger trend throughout the book attacked Diamond's attempt to explain inequality and conquest as justifications for that conquest. This is obtuse - Diamond is clearly not an imperialist (he's far too nice for that) and he clearly understands the unfortunate dynamics of colonialism. By confusing any explanation of oppression for a justification, the authors preclude inquiry into its causes. If scientists like Diamond are to make any contribution to confronting oppression, it will be through understanding and explaining their causes and the factors that allow them to be perpetuated.
While this may be merely a result of the diversity of authors present, it was also ambiguous whether Diamond was to be criticized for being too deterministic (thus painting humans as robots with no agency) or not deterministic enough (and therein blaming eg Haitians for destroying their environment). These may both be valid arguments in their own ways, but their juxtaposition added to the confusion of the book.
Worst of all was the pleading question of definitions: Diamond was wrong not because his scholarship was inadequate or his interpretation faulty, but simply because the authors didn't like his definitions (of collapse, of success/failure, etc). Emphasizing that languages, races, and many other cultural traits are perpetuated after most collapses does not make collapse irrelevant or unreal. While perhaps Diamond's definitions are flawed (aren't all such definitions?), this seems a rather childish and unproductive way of addressing the works. It essentially precludes discussion, since the differences between the scholars is fundamental, not specific. It willfully introduces the confounding factor Will Durant (I believe?) identified as the root of most philosophical debates.
Many of the articles do in fact introduce evidence to directly contradict Diamond. I could take little from such discussions, however, since the conversation devolved to a he-said, she-said in which I could only discover "truth" by looking at the primary sources (which I have insufficient drive to do at the moment). For example: "Another chapter contends that the ancient people of the American southwest, the Anasazi, did not deforest Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, that “there was never a forest in the canyon” and that analysis of plant remains in ancient pack-rat middens there “reveal a climate and ecology almost exactly like that which exists today”. Yet the opposite is true: radiocarbon dating of middens revealed a former pinyon-juniper woodland that is now absent from the canyon." - from Diamond's excellent response - http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/...
The editors' response to Diamond's review adds another layer to the same unproductive back-and-forth: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/...
Overall, the volume feels like a knee-jerk response to Diamond's popular work. It offers no alternative perspective, its critiques often feel inconsistent and half-baked, and the sentiment of jealousy, though often denied, is occasionally detectable. This is unfortunate, since a response that attempted to integrate Diamond's contribution to the debate, find its flaws, and continue working towards a better explanation would be quite valuable.
That said, however, I found this book to be somewhat incoherent, often baffling, and full of special pleading. For one thing, the overall message was scattered because the authors never attempted to replace Diamond's environmental determinist thesis with an explanation of their own. The conclusion was rather that the matter is simply too complex for general explanations that can be abstracted out of context. This may be true, but it is not the feeling many anthropologists seem to have, largely because it is not very useful assumption on which to predicate investigations of cause and effect (ie, explanations and predictions - the very stuff of science). I interpret this as an unfortunate damage-control response to the perceived widespread belief in Diamond's popular thesis, which they see as overly simplistic. Since they fail to advance any argument of their own (other than "it's complicated") the evidence each essay provides about its own case study often feels superfluous and irrelevant.
An even stranger trend throughout the book attacked Diamond's attempt to explain inequality and conquest as justifications for that conquest. This is obtuse - Diamond is clearly not an imperialist (he's far too nice for that) and he clearly understands the unfortunate dynamics of colonialism. By confusing any explanation of oppression for a justification, the authors preclude inquiry into its causes. If scientists like Diamond are to make any contribution to confronting oppression, it will be through understanding and explaining their causes and the factors that allow them to be perpetuated.
While this may be merely a result of the diversity of authors present, it was also ambiguous whether Diamond was to be criticized for being too deterministic (thus painting humans as robots with no agency) or not deterministic enough (and therein blaming eg Haitians for destroying their environment). These may both be valid arguments in their own ways, but their juxtaposition added to the confusion of the book.
Worst of all was the pleading question of definitions: Diamond was wrong not because his scholarship was inadequate or his interpretation faulty, but simply because the authors didn't like his definitions (of collapse, of success/failure, etc). Emphasizing that languages, races, and many other cultural traits are perpetuated after most collapses does not make collapse irrelevant or unreal. While perhaps Diamond's definitions are flawed (aren't all such definitions?), this seems a rather childish and unproductive way of addressing the works. It essentially precludes discussion, since the differences between the scholars is fundamental, not specific. It willfully introduces the confounding factor Will Durant (I believe?) identified as the root of most philosophical debates.
Many of the articles do in fact introduce evidence to directly contradict Diamond. I could take little from such discussions, however, since the conversation devolved to a he-said, she-said in which I could only discover "truth" by looking at the primary sources (which I have insufficient drive to do at the moment). For example: "Another chapter contends that the ancient people of the American southwest, the Anasazi, did not deforest Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, that “there was never a forest in the canyon” and that analysis of plant remains in ancient pack-rat middens there “reveal a climate and ecology almost exactly like that which exists today”. Yet the opposite is true: radiocarbon dating of middens revealed a former pinyon-juniper woodland that is now absent from the canyon." - from Diamond's excellent response - http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/...
The editors' response to Diamond's review adds another layer to the same unproductive back-and-forth: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/...
Overall, the volume feels like a knee-jerk response to Diamond's popular work. It offers no alternative perspective, its critiques often feel inconsistent and half-baked, and the sentiment of jealousy, though often denied, is occasionally detectable. This is unfortunate, since a response that attempted to integrate Diamond's contribution to the debate, find its flaws, and continue working towards a better explanation would be quite valuable.
September 10, 2012
An interesting and approachable collection of essays that function as a response to Jared Diamond's two very recent (and very popular) works, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. There's a wide range of tones going on here - the gentle questioning of Diamond's parameters in Patricia McAnany's discussion of 8th century Mayan society, the dissatisfaction with his propensity to ignore local historical and cultural influences in Christopher Taylor's harrowing account of 1994 Rwandan genocide, the impassioned anger of Michael Wilcox, who accuses Diamond of perpetuating the narrative of colonialism and victim-blaming in his treatment of the O'Odham people of the American Southwest.
In the broad scheme of things, this is a work that argues for the importance of local context. Diamond's ideas are big, they argue, and often aimed towards the laudable end of encouraging people to care more for their environment. But because he rarely takes account of local factors and worldviews, his facts are often incorrect or broadly misinterpreted. Social collapse, it is argued, is much more than bad ecological decision making. There are a wide variety of issues that play into it - historical, cultural, economic - and often, societies are not left with any good choice at all, or choices are made for them by newly-arrived colonizers.
It's a really enjoyable and thought-provoking book, especially good for those for readers like me, who don't have an ecological or anthropological background coming into it. It's very accessible and covers a great range of fascinating topics and highlights the very important point that details and context matter. I think some essays work better than others, but on the whole it's a really thought-provoking piece. I'd especially recommend a couple of them:
- Carl Lipo & Terry Hunt's piece on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) totally dismantles Diamond's storyline for the island and does a good job of showing how ecological disaster often is not a matter of choice at all.
- Michael Wilcox's defense of the O'Odham people in the American Southwest is one of the more impassioned pieces of scholarship I've read. While he may be a little harsh on Diamond (he pretty much accuses him of perpetuating colonialism), he makes some very good points and is telling a story that doesn't often get told.
- Christopher Taylor's insistence that the Rwandan genocide can't simply be boiled down to overpopulation is well argued and supported by the harrowing story of how he survived the genocide himself, with his Tutsi wife.
In the broad scheme of things, this is a work that argues for the importance of local context. Diamond's ideas are big, they argue, and often aimed towards the laudable end of encouraging people to care more for their environment. But because he rarely takes account of local factors and worldviews, his facts are often incorrect or broadly misinterpreted. Social collapse, it is argued, is much more than bad ecological decision making. There are a wide variety of issues that play into it - historical, cultural, economic - and often, societies are not left with any good choice at all, or choices are made for them by newly-arrived colonizers.
It's a really enjoyable and thought-provoking book, especially good for those for readers like me, who don't have an ecological or anthropological background coming into it. It's very accessible and covers a great range of fascinating topics and highlights the very important point that details and context matter. I think some essays work better than others, but on the whole it's a really thought-provoking piece. I'd especially recommend a couple of them:
- Carl Lipo & Terry Hunt's piece on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) totally dismantles Diamond's storyline for the island and does a good job of showing how ecological disaster often is not a matter of choice at all.
- Michael Wilcox's defense of the O'Odham people in the American Southwest is one of the more impassioned pieces of scholarship I've read. While he may be a little harsh on Diamond (he pretty much accuses him of perpetuating colonialism), he makes some very good points and is telling a story that doesn't often get told.
- Christopher Taylor's insistence that the Rwandan genocide can't simply be boiled down to overpopulation is well argued and supported by the harrowing story of how he survived the genocide himself, with his Tutsi wife.
February 9, 2012
Interesting and very readable critic of Jared Diamond's "Collapse" and "Guns, Germs and Steel". Written by specialists of each field covered by Diamond's work, it includes additional information that might have been overlooked by Diamond.
Authors of the various chapters sometimes seem to be very bitter, jealous of Diamond's success. I felt it could affect their judgement, these sections can be skipped.
I would nevertheless recommend this book, if you're interested in the field.
Authors of the various chapters sometimes seem to be very bitter, jealous of Diamond's success. I felt it could affect their judgement, these sections can be skipped.
I would nevertheless recommend this book, if you're interested in the field.
May 7, 2017
QUESTIONING COLLAPSE: HUMAN RESILIENCE, ECOLOGICAL VULNERABILITY, AND THE AFTERMATH OF EMPIRE assembles fifteen scholars--anthropologists mainly--who challenge Diamond’s claims in COLLAPSE chapter-by-chapter in order to offer a “more deeply contextualized” and a “more complicated” explanation for why past societies declined but more importantly survived (3). Their main critique of Diamond is that his evidence speaks toward human resilience and survival in spite of major ecological struggles that he seems to neglect in favor of the more sensational theme of apocalyptic destruction and sudden collapse of societies. In reality, this is not how history or societies operate; they may decline significantly but it is usually over long periods of time and more often than not the societies adapt in one way or another to survive in another organization or location.
These authors begin their critique from a discipline perspective--Diamond is a geographer who is drawing upon the research, methodologies, and conclusions of anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians as if he is qualified to do so. Overall, the anthropologists would like to reclaim their discipline and offer more complete understandings of the societies Diamond terms as succumbing to "collapse"--usually demonstrating that they were not choosing to decline, that many causes outside of their agency and actions lead to deforestation, erosion and other catastrophes, and that all of the societies that "collapsed" have surviving ancestors that adapted and survive into the present day. Furthermore, Diamond is accused by various others for succumbing to presentism, reinforcing a colonial conquest narrative, and falsely dating key events and identifying primal causes of environmental strain. Though the authors do thank Diamond for generating interest among the public in past societies and history in general, they are overwhelmingly critical of his conclusions and arguments.
Although this book is slightly more technical than Diamond's--and the fact that it took 15 people to refute the grand argument of 1 Jared Diamond, this is a very interesting book that is best read in conjunction with (and preferably after Diamond's COLLAPSE) in order to show how writing for a popular audience (and trying to convince them to apply past lessons to present choices) produces a vastly different and problematic product than writing for a critical audience that primarily aims to paint the most accurate and nuanced explanation for how things were and how they changed.
(pp. 1-44, 113-175, 239-268)
These authors begin their critique from a discipline perspective--Diamond is a geographer who is drawing upon the research, methodologies, and conclusions of anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians as if he is qualified to do so. Overall, the anthropologists would like to reclaim their discipline and offer more complete understandings of the societies Diamond terms as succumbing to "collapse"--usually demonstrating that they were not choosing to decline, that many causes outside of their agency and actions lead to deforestation, erosion and other catastrophes, and that all of the societies that "collapsed" have surviving ancestors that adapted and survive into the present day. Furthermore, Diamond is accused by various others for succumbing to presentism, reinforcing a colonial conquest narrative, and falsely dating key events and identifying primal causes of environmental strain. Though the authors do thank Diamond for generating interest among the public in past societies and history in general, they are overwhelmingly critical of his conclusions and arguments.
Although this book is slightly more technical than Diamond's--and the fact that it took 15 people to refute the grand argument of 1 Jared Diamond, this is a very interesting book that is best read in conjunction with (and preferably after Diamond's COLLAPSE) in order to show how writing for a popular audience (and trying to convince them to apply past lessons to present choices) produces a vastly different and problematic product than writing for a critical audience that primarily aims to paint the most accurate and nuanced explanation for how things were and how they changed.
(pp. 1-44, 113-175, 239-268)
April 18, 2020
The book challenges some of Jared Diamonds work in his books Collapse and Guns Germs and Steel and seems impressively well researched and corroborated and it certainly shows how contentious different interpretations of archaeology and geology can be amongst historians and other related academics. To me this book became an unexpected insight into paradigm, Diamonds objective struck me as being to write entertaining books which cover vast overviews of history, the various authors of this book had a much narrower focus on pointing out that at a much more detailed level some of Diamond’s conclusions could be interpreted differently. However, whether right or wrong, for me Jared Diamond’s books are much more fun.
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July 23, 2011This is a collection of essays by anthropologists finding fault with Jared Diamond's books, "Guns, Germs, and Steel" and "Collapse". There are a few bits of new useful information, e.g. that stowaway rats arriving with the first Polynesians to reach Easter Island probably deserve a lot of the blame for subsequent deforestation and species loss. They bred like crazy and ate seeds and other important bits of the local food and reproductive chains. But most of the essays just take a few cracks at Diamond, say things are more complex and have to be taken in context, and then seek to demonstrate complexity and context by elaborating on the authors' specialized corners of anthropology. But they are weak in explaining any lessons the reader should take away from this, other than that things are complex, need to be taken in context, and should probably be left to specialized anthropologists. Other than that the one lesson that seems pretty consistent is that the behavior of white European explorers and colonists was usually the cause of everything that went wrong. If that's true, I could draw the optimistic conclusion that nearly all the bad stuff in the world is the fault of white European colonial behavior. If you change that (and it's changed a lot in the last 200 years), maybe there's nothing to worry about. I don't know if that's the message. The authors don't tell us.
August 7, 2013
An abysmal attempt at a response to Jared Diamond's Collapse and Guns, Germs, and Steel book. It managed to merely embarrass itself instead of offering unique or thought-provoking arguments.
The book itself is a collection of essays by different authors, each focusing on a different point made by Diamond at some point. Sadly, nearly every author felt the need to focus on ad hominem attacks instead of jumping straight into their point. How many times does it have to be said that Jared Diamond does not have a degree in anthropology? Who cares when he is making a better argument than any of these other degree'd folks.
The book doesn't start off too badly. Unfortunately, they organized the book to contain the better arguments up front. By the end, the authors were ranting about the definition of cargo and goods, or about how Diamond is so wrong because he didn't give a certain culture a shout out as an example in his book, or about the definition of collapse (which Diamond explicitly defines in his book).
Badly written, terrible arguments, nitpicking, tangents about irrelevant aspects all surrounding a chronic problem of the authors not seeming to understand what Diamond was saying. I can't count the number of times I read a point in this book and thought to myself, "That's not at all what I thought Diamond was saying."
The book itself is a collection of essays by different authors, each focusing on a different point made by Diamond at some point. Sadly, nearly every author felt the need to focus on ad hominem attacks instead of jumping straight into their point. How many times does it have to be said that Jared Diamond does not have a degree in anthropology? Who cares when he is making a better argument than any of these other degree'd folks.
The book doesn't start off too badly. Unfortunately, they organized the book to contain the better arguments up front. By the end, the authors were ranting about the definition of cargo and goods, or about how Diamond is so wrong because he didn't give a certain culture a shout out as an example in his book, or about the definition of collapse (which Diamond explicitly defines in his book).
Badly written, terrible arguments, nitpicking, tangents about irrelevant aspects all surrounding a chronic problem of the authors not seeming to understand what Diamond was saying. I can't count the number of times I read a point in this book and thought to myself, "That's not at all what I thought Diamond was saying."
April 1, 2020
This book isn’t out to totally bash Jared Diamond’s ‘Collapse’ book to bits. It criticizes Diamond but the meat of this book was looking at some of the cases featured in Diamond’s book in addition to some other cases where people have commonly thought of collapse in relation. The book challenges the readers to not think that these societies collapsed, but instead to look at all the facts and factors. In most cases the societies did not just collapse due to their own political or selfish actions. I liked some cases more than others. Some made me very interested. Others had me dozing as I forced myself to read them for class. And I didn’t quite like the way Diamond was attacked. I haven’t read his ‘Collapse’ book myself, but even if some of his facts are false, the tone against him felt mean. I think it did well in presenting facts and making the reader aware that collapse is not always as catastrophic as it is sometimes set out to seem.
September 24, 2023
"Although most archaeologists do believe, along with Diamond, that we can learn from the past, we do not think that the past was the same as the present in key aspects. We are all certainly alarmed that environmental mismanagement in the present is a clear and evident danger to life on earth. What we can learn from the past is thus the more striking: ancient kings and governments, which did not ruin their environments on a massive scale and didn’t have the power to do so, are no models for the present. Rather, the present situation is dire precisely because there is no clear precedent for global environmental mismanagement." - Norman Yoffee
This collects about a dozen essays by anthropologists and archaeologists that take issue with the environmental determinism and populationism that mar Jared Diamond's bestsellers Guns, Germs & Steel and Collapse. Some of the essays are better than others. The two standouts were Terry Hunt & Carl P. Lipo's essay on the 'Myth of Ecocide' on Easter Island, and Michael Wilcox's 'Indigenous Response to Jared Diamond’s Archaeology of the American Southwest'. Norman Yoffee's point above is a critical one I think. A danger inherent in interpreting the current global ecological crisis mainly through the lens of environmental issues of ancient societies is that it obscures the historical uniqueness of the Anthropocene and capitalism's global metabolic rift.
"I wonder each time I visit the flooded golf courses and melting asphalt surrounding the Ivory Towers of the southwestern mega-universities how Indigenous peoples, who cultivated fields, rotated crops, and developed drought - and disease - resistant strains of corn for at least a thousand years in a desert, are now the locus classicus of willful environmental mismanagement. In Collapse, Diamond merely relays the well-worn tradition among many Southwestern archaeologists of explaining the abandonment of just about every archaeological site as the consequence of environmental mismanagement or warfare resulting from environmental mismanagement. It seems that before the accident of European conquest, Native Americans chose to abuse either the environment, or each other, and this set the table for conquest, colonization, poverty, and the 'vanished' (or invisible) Indian." - Michael Wilcox
August 27, 2025
I have no idea who Jared Diamond is, but sounds like someone who writes things for people to read? Anyway, I read this because I'm interested in Collapse research. This book was really great to read! I liked the breadth of the stories and I got to learn about places and times I've never really thought about. I also appreciated the constant reminder to hold 'history' with an open hand, given that interpretation plays such a major role. This book left me hopeful and more curious about cultural mobility (after this year having completed reading of Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto that I think would pair well!) and for something like a future in the wake of environmental disaster. I read this at the same time as Place of the Wild: A Wildlands Anthology and Alienation and Nature in Environmental Philosophy, which was a nice pairing!
I don't know anything about Jared Diamond's books, but it was nice to see some counter-arguments against blaming specific people groups (usually non-culturally dominant ones and those with less power in the global market) for environmental degradation without looking at the various political and economic factors at play. This seems very important for now. For more on this point, I enjoyed the last few chapters of The Labyrinth of Solitude and Other Writings and Cruel Optimism. No grand, unifying theories needed!
I don't know anything about Jared Diamond's books, but it was nice to see some counter-arguments against blaming specific people groups (usually non-culturally dominant ones and those with less power in the global market) for environmental degradation without looking at the various political and economic factors at play. This seems very important for now. For more on this point, I enjoyed the last few chapters of The Labyrinth of Solitude and Other Writings and Cruel Optimism. No grand, unifying theories needed!
November 20, 2023
The authors are critical against Jared Diamonds books about empires, climate and collapse. Jareds hugely popular books have made an enormous impact with his exciting style of writing, making a good story, a story which is also an acceptable view and lauded by media. It has had tremendous influence in schools and universities.
The different authors in chapters goes through Jareds argumentation in their own expert areas, and they found him wanting. They often do not find collapse, but resilience. Not bad decision making, but different, more varied explanations.
It is amazing how an non-expert authors views (Jared is a geographer) can make such a big impact. His description becomes a painting, a cover how we view World history. Even if a few of us read broadly, most will just take the simple, fun, generally accepted view. But you just can’t take a Western view like Jared does, instead you have to go deeper into complicated situations and understand.
Jared also uses sources wrong and it is dangerous to take archeology as a weapon for todays discussions. For example, the Assyrian empire made different subjugated peoples move to Assyria. This made the area consist with peoples with different ethnicity, religion and language. The Assyrian state was no longer homogenous, so when they was defeated militarily they could no longer bounce back. When Assyria was crushed it wasn’t rebuilt and never came back in history. You can imagine how this could be used by some political groups…
I end with some sentences from the Rwanda chapter, about the genocide: “Motivations have to be engendered, nurtured, and mobilized. This takes time and requires the use of mass communication (radio, television, and print media). Moreover, these media have to incite passion in an imaginative and culturally appropriate way. “
This media view can be applied on many situations, including Jareds books.
The different authors in chapters goes through Jareds argumentation in their own expert areas, and they found him wanting. They often do not find collapse, but resilience. Not bad decision making, but different, more varied explanations.
It is amazing how an non-expert authors views (Jared is a geographer) can make such a big impact. His description becomes a painting, a cover how we view World history. Even if a few of us read broadly, most will just take the simple, fun, generally accepted view. But you just can’t take a Western view like Jared does, instead you have to go deeper into complicated situations and understand.
Jared also uses sources wrong and it is dangerous to take archeology as a weapon for todays discussions. For example, the Assyrian empire made different subjugated peoples move to Assyria. This made the area consist with peoples with different ethnicity, religion and language. The Assyrian state was no longer homogenous, so when they was defeated militarily they could no longer bounce back. When Assyria was crushed it wasn’t rebuilt and never came back in history. You can imagine how this could be used by some political groups…
I end with some sentences from the Rwanda chapter, about the genocide: “Motivations have to be engendered, nurtured, and mobilized. This takes time and requires the use of mass communication (radio, television, and print media). Moreover, these media have to incite passion in an imaginative and culturally appropriate way. “
This media view can be applied on many situations, including Jareds books.
October 25, 2020
I was curious to read this collection of essays criticizing Collapse by Jared Diamond. I gave up halfway however.
Some of the essays made good points about the perils of over-simplifying (ex: the Maya didn't collapse just because a Spaniard showed up with a horse) and rewriting history from the point of view of the avowed "winners".
I took issue however with the arguments taken pervasively at face value, for example the constant criticism that societies do not "choose to fail" (indeed: they make choices whose consequences lead to failure) and descendants of "failed" societies being alive today (of course: members of a sinking society leave if they can and are absorbed into and influence others). When reading that in some cases social unrest was a larger factor than supply disruptions and environmental pressure, it made me wonder what had been causing the social unrest in the first place... which is one of Diamond's points.
Some of the essays made good points about the perils of over-simplifying (ex: the Maya didn't collapse just because a Spaniard showed up with a horse) and rewriting history from the point of view of the avowed "winners".
I took issue however with the arguments taken pervasively at face value, for example the constant criticism that societies do not "choose to fail" (indeed: they make choices whose consequences lead to failure) and descendants of "failed" societies being alive today (of course: members of a sinking society leave if they can and are absorbed into and influence others). When reading that in some cases social unrest was a larger factor than supply disruptions and environmental pressure, it made me wonder what had been causing the social unrest in the first place... which is one of Diamond's points.
August 9, 2020
I did like the most Michael Wilcox’s essay "Marketing Conquest and the Vanishing Indian” pag.135
What greater irony could one image than the manner in which
Christianity, which begins as a small sectarian cult that rejected
materialism and embraced a radical egalitarian philosophy, is yoked
violently to the arms and economic ambitions of the Spanish state?
In Spain and its colonies, Christianity was militarized through the
character of Santiago Matamoros (St.James the Moor killer), a mythical brother of Christ.
What greater irony could one image than the manner in which
Christianity, which begins as a small sectarian cult that rejected
materialism and embraced a radical egalitarian philosophy, is yoked
violently to the arms and economic ambitions of the Spanish state?
In Spain and its colonies, Christianity was militarized through the
character of Santiago Matamoros (St.James the Moor killer), a mythical brother of Christ.
September 1, 2024
It's more anthropology than I was used to, which made for some dry reads that didn't exactly inspire beyond their main thrust of "Hey Jared Diamond, did you consider this?". That said, the essays on the history of Maya, Mesopotamia and especially Inca were great reads that I think stand on their own.
January 5, 2025
bought this at a goodwills and provided a well made argument against many of Jared Diamond's ideas in "Collapse" and "Guns, Germs, and Steel," and even if the arguments do not convince you (some did not for me) it still provides a LOT of knowledge and insight into many ancient and not so ancient civilizations
March 22, 2013
Enjoyable and very approachable. This book is a collection of essays pertaining to the particular societies that Diamond examines in his works. I think this book is a good compliment to Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed because many of Diamond's arguments are in danger of being taken at face value, which is a skewed way of looking at history in any aspect. Many of the author's do not directly confront many of Diamond's claims because some of them are correct, just incomplete. I also enjoyed the layout of this book which is neatly organized by society, therefore if you were interested in the rebuttal for Diamond's discussion of Easter Island, one chapter is devoted to that, etc.
September 5, 2011
Engrossing and thought-provoking, scholarly but accessible. Should be required background reading for students of ancient civilizations and all those with an anthropological focus. Many facts and reasonable deductions are brought to bear on our understanding of the factors involved in the demise of once powerful nations. The level of nuance is very convincing to repudiate the easy calculations of previous theories which emphasized collapse from within due to despotism and bad management of resources. The authors show that collapse is not always a disaster or even negative and many times due to the crushing invasion of foreign interests (armies). I urge all those interested to be prepared to be challenged.
November 16, 2011
This is a very useful critique of Jared Diamond's bestsellers. Not perfect, but thought provoking and challenging. The various authors argue that Diamon has either over-stated his case, missed vital evidence (or interpreted it wrongly) or made the mistake of blaming the victims for their situation. Full review, and other links here:
http://resolutereader.blogspot.com/20...
http://resolutereader.blogspot.com/20...
September 30, 2010
Gets five stars because, although many of its essays are densely written in beginning-academic prose, it deflates Jared Diamond and his boring germs.
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