The World System and the Earth System

'The Earth System and the World 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 McC. Heyman, University of Texas at El Paso '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""?' Professor Will Steffen, Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies (CRES), Australian National University '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 inseperable 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 'At its core, this book aims to bridge the gaps that undoubtedly exist between social and natural systems and to show how it is possible to adopt a holistic viewpoint by adopting a 'systems' perspective to both the natural and social sciences...This is in many ways a fascinating and thought provoking text that will be a source of stimulation to many environmental archaeologists.' Martin Kent, Journal of Archaeological Science

Hornborg, Alf; Crumley, Carole L

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 HumanEnvironment 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 19181919, 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