Joined: Sep 30, 2004 Posts: 975 Location: On one of the blades of the fan
Posted: Thu Jan 06, 2005 12:00 pm Post subject: "The Collapse of Complex Societies" Joseph Tainter
The Collapse of Complex Societies
by
Joseph A. Tainter
Cambridge University Press 1988
Summary:
Tainter examines 2000 years of explanations for the collapse of complex societies (i.e. city dwelling, complex-technology using, specialisation of roles). He rejects the theories to date as simplistic and postulates his own, that complex societies reach a point where their complexity produces diminishing returns and they contract, resulting in simpler societies. This is a dry book, so in the spirit of The Guardian newspaper, I’m going to condense it so you don’t have to read it.
Review:
I originally read this a few years ago – before I’d heard of Peak Oil – because I couldn’t resist the title, so I ordered it from the library, living as I do in a complex society which has specialist personnel such as librarians.
As it is aimed at an academic audience it is very dry. I didn’t think you could make the collapse of civilisation boring, but Tainter can. That said, it is a classic.
First Tainter examines the many theories of civilisation collapse: he finds them wanting. I won’t go into this in depth but none of the reasons put forward including intruding enemies, natural disasters, incompetent rulers, resource depletion, class conflict, “cycles of civilisation and barbarism” or mystical forces fully explain why complex societies collapse. Tainter points out that these societies possess resources: material, human and technological that simpler societies do not, and this would make them less likely to collapse, not more. Furthermore, most of these societies had already survived repeated crises such as the above.
It is also foolish to assume that the ruling classes/administrators of these societies were stupid or incompetent.
He shows that “collapse” is a dynamic process: the society did not just fall over, but went through a rapid process of change, where they attempted to respond to events, compensating for what was happening. Finally they devolved into simpler societies –e.g. the Mayans abandoned their great cities, going back to become peasant farmers.
Obviously there are considerable gaps in our knowledge: collapsing societies tend not to keep great records.
Tainter postulates that the increasing complexity of a society (including specialists, not generalists, ruling classes and priests, standing armies, bureaucracies and diplomatic/trading/conquest relationships with other states) start off being a benefit to the populous, then increasing complexity brings marginal returns, the complexity of the society becomes a burden on most of its inhabitants and then it transforms into a society of lower complexity.
(Note how blandly Tainter describes this: I imagine, at the very least, this transformation involves refugees and much dislocation; but more likely war, riot, crime, starvation and disease).
Tainter’s Four Concepts:
1. Human societies are problem-solving organisations
2. Sociopolitical systems require energy for their maintenance [my italics]
3. Increased complexity carries with it increased costs per capita; and
4. Investment in sociopolitical complexity as a problem-solving response often reaches a point of declining marginal returns.
(P.93)
He examines three falling civilisations in minute detail: The Western Roman Empire (period of decline circa 161 CE – 476 CE), The Classic Maya of the Southern Lowlands (decline circa 790 CE – 889 CE, and the Chacoans of the US Southwest (Colorado) (decline circa 1150 CE -1300 CE).
Some of this book is necessarily speculation as although we have good records from the Romans, Mayan writing (on monuments) is not fully understood; the Chacoans left no written records, so they are known only from archaeological evidence.
These societies had grown to the point where they were pushing their limits – geographically, agriculturally, economically and ecologically, as well as in terms of complexity; they are then vulnerable to “stress surges” (Tainter’s term) that push them over the breaking point. A stress surge could be a famine or an enemy incursion. I bet you’re thinking “Peak Oil” sounds like a stress surge – it does to me too.
Close reading of some of the detail shows that farmers leaving the land for urban centres in the late Roman empire was simply the result of bad taxation policies, and should not be a guide for contemporary peakers.
Some collapse theorists have noted the time that it took these societies to crumble – hundreds of years – so extrapolated to our own society; leaving aside differences; unfortunately parts of Tainter’s thesis suggests that after a society passes a crisis point, bits fall off quickly – for instance, although the Maya collapse took years in total, individual Maya city states each went down in a decade or two: we know this because Mayan buildings and monuments had plaques on them dating them in the Mayan calendar, which has been reconciled to our own. Quite suddenly the dating stopped and the population centres were abandoned one after the other.
Where does this leave Peak Oil?
In a final summary of the implications Tainter tries to extrapolate to our own global society; here his vision is at its weakest – probably he did not want to contemplate the fall of us. I’m sure he’s got some nice tenured academic post, part of the specialised classes who might go the way of the Mayan priesthood. He speculates about possible engines of destruction such as nuclear war or the shortage of industrial resources, but says: “So it is that collapse (from declining marginal returns) is not in the immediate future for any contemporary nation.” (p.214) Oh no? With 20/20 hindsight we can see that the fall of the Berlin wall was a small, milder version of one of these collapses; so are the various failed states which have disintegrated into patchworks of warlordism. And the globalised, developed world has many of the characteristics that preceded the collapses he details: high-complexity, increasing population, environmental degradation and resource shortage.
Another interesting, but ominous book. I’m only going to give it *** because of its dry writing tone.
Yes, Tainter's writing style is dry, but it is nevertheless a brilliant book. Another one that I may recommend is "The Green History of the World" by Clive Ponting.
Joined: Sep 30, 2004 Posts: 975 Location: On one of the blades of the fan
Posted: Thu Jan 06, 2005 4:41 pm Post subject: Missed that one
Aha! Missed that one.
Just skimmed the posting! Seems excellent - so dear readers you can have my Guardian Digest or Leanan's more comprehensive one DBOGOF (Don't buy one get one free )
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