All Is Not Always Lost When the Center Does Not Hold

摘要

It is perhaps not too surprising that in a time of widespread anxiety about global environmental change, the collapse of civilizations is a topic of intense interest. For example, building on scholarly work in archaeology from the last 20 years, Jared Diamond's recent bestseller, Collapse, merged an apocalyptic vision of environmental degradation with an upbeat lesson from the self-help literature, suggesting that societies have chosen to succeed or fail.