Perspectives on Public Policy in Societal-Environmental Crises : What the Future Needs from History.
- 1st ed.
- 1 online resource (340 pages)
- Risk, Systems and Decisions Series .
- Risk, Systems and Decisions Series .
Intro -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- Introduction: What Sort of Past Does Our Future Need? -- History and Public Policy in the Era of Planetary Crisis -- What Stories Should Historians Be Telling at the Dawn of the Anthropocene? -- The First Answer: The Anthropocene as a Challenge to Humankind -- The Second Answer: The Anthropocene as a Viewpoint -- The Third Answer: The Anthropocene as Opportunity for the Research Community -- The Fourth Answer: History as Social Critique -- References -- The Anthropocene Contract. What Kind of Historian-Reader Agreement Does Environmental Historiography Need? -- Introduction -- A Response by a Theory of History -- The Question of Readership -- Egalitarian Historiography -- Conclusion -- References -- History and Utopian Thinking in the Era of the Anthropocene -- Introduction -- History and Criticism in the Era of the Anthropocene -- History and the Future in the Era of the Anthropocene -- Conclusions -- References -- Potentials and Risks of Futurology: Lessons from Late Socialist Poland -- Planetary Crises, Historiography and the Futurology of the Past -- Future Research in Late Socialist Poland -- Epistemology: Meta-Prognostic Modelling of the Future -- Social Technology: Future Research as an Instrument of State Planning -- Sociological Imagination: Future Research as Contemporary Utopia -- Conclusion -- References -- Globalization as Adaptive Complexity: Learning from Failure -- Introduction -- Looking to History -- Defining Collapse -- Identifying the Causes of Collapse -- Systemic Mechanisms of Collapse -- Tipping Points -- Feedback Loops -- Contagions -- Cascades -- Synchronous Failures -- Cycles -- Resilience and Mitigation -- Conclusion -- References -- Disjunctures of Practice and the Problems of Collapse -- Introduction -- Historical Experiments: Primacy, Principle and Practice. Theory as Tool: Complex Adaptive Systems -- Diversity, Flexibility and Durability: An Alternative Nomenclature with Alternative Implications -- Learning from Systems Under Stress: Antecedents and Anticipation -- What Relevance Can History Have if We Are Living in a No-Analog Age? -- What Deep Time Perspectives Can Offer to Contemporary Debates -- Possibilistic Reasoning, Counterfactuals and Scenario Modelling -- Policy Implications -- The Problems of Sustainability, Resilience, Transformation -- Conclusion -- References -- Climate Change -- Geoengineering and the Middle Ages: Lessons from Medieval Volcanic Eruptions for the Anthropocene -- Geoengineering and the Anthropocene -- Volcanic Cooling and Solar Radiation Management -- All Kinds of Uncertainties -- The Role of Medieval History: More Precision -- Dating Uncertainty and Historical Sources -- Clarifying the Conditions of a Possible Future: Let Frankenstein Sleep -- References -- A Perfect Tsunami? El Nino, War and Resilience on Aceh, Sumatra -- Introduction -- Monsoons and El Ni�no Southern Oscillation (ENSO) -- Earthquakes and Tsunamis -- Natural Disasters and War -- 1873-1880: Scorched Earth and Population Displacement -- 1880-1884 War, Resilience, and Recovery -- The Concentrated Line -- Measuring Resilience at the Systemic Scale Through GIS -- Sub-Systemic Resilience and Collapse: A Village View in Lamara -- The Village Was Entirely Abandoned in 1891 -- Conclusion -- References -- Social Responses to Climate Change in a Politically Decentralized Context: A Case Study from East African History -- Introduction: Collapse, Resilience, and the Centralized State in Historical Climatology -- 500 BCE-900 CE: Resilience Through Interaction -- 900 to 1400-"collapse" and Transformation -- Conclusion -- References. Resilience at the Edge: Strategies of Small-Scale Societies for Long-Term Sustainable Living in Dryland Environments -- Introduction -- Basin Wetlands -- Linear Valleys -- Conclusions -- References -- Beyond Boom and Bust: Climate in the History of Medieval Steppe Empires (C. 550-1350 CE) -- Case Studies -- Concluding Remarks -- References -- Lessons for Modern Environmental and Climate Policy from Iron Age South Central Africa -- Introduction -- Background -- An Introduction to Historical Linguistics -- Forgotten Strategies for Future Policy -- References -- Crisis and Recovery -- Systemic Risk and Resilience: The Bronze Age Collapse and Recovery -- Introduction -- Systemic Resilience and Risk in Societies -- Resilience -- Systemic Risk -- The Bronze Age -- System Interconnectivity: Economic, Political and Cultural -- Shocks and Interconnections -- Mapping the Systems Collapse -- Bronze Age Recovery -- Conclusions: Parallels to the Modern Globalised World System -- References -- Panarchy and the Adaptive Cycle: A Case Study from Mycenaean Greece -- Introduction -- Brief Overview of the Bronze Age Collapse -- Resilience/Adaptive Cycle/Panarchy -- The Aegean Region as an Example of Panarchic Collapse -- Discussion/Conclusions -- References -- Managing the Roman Empire for the Long Term: Risk Assessment and Management Policy in the Fifth to Seventh Centuries -- The Late Roman Empire: An Administrative Approach -- Landscape and Climatic Change in the Late Roman Empire: An Environmental Approach -- The Late Roman Empire in the East: A Systems Approach -- Conclusion -- References -- Success and Failure in the Norse North Atlantic: Origins, Pathway Divergence, Extinction and Survival -- Introduction -- The Archaeological Science-Policy Interface -- Problems of Collapse Discourse -- How Are Archaeological Data Useful Now? -- Getting Beyond Collapse?. Human Ecodynamics Perspectives in the North Atlantic and Beyond -- Qualitative Scenarios Storylines and Collaborative Conceptual Modelling -- Norse Greenland -- Lessons from the Past -- Scenarios and Counterfactuals -- Conclusion -- References -- Resilience of Coupled Socio-Ecological Systems: Historic Rice Fields of the U.S. South -- Defining Resilience -- Resilience on Lowcountry Wetlands and in Lowcountry Rice Fields -- Resilience, Climate Change, and the 21st Century Rice Field Infrastructure -- Conclusion -- References -- The Short- and Long-Term Effects of an Early Medieval Pandemic -- Introduction -- Setting the Scene: The Roman Empire and the Outbreak of Plague -- Short-Term Responses to the First Plague Outbreak in 542 C.E -- Public Reaction -- State Response in Constantinople -- Annual to Decadal-Scale Responses -- State Effects in the First Five Years: The 540s -- Effects on a Decadal Scale: Causality and Caution -- Conclusion -- References -- Migration and the Environment -- The Integration of Settlers into Existing Socio-Environmental Settings: Reclaiming the Greek Lands After the Late Medieval Crisis -- Introduction -- The Turkish Nomads in Thessaly -- The Albanians in the Peloponnese -- Conclusions -- Appendix -- References -- Eastward Migration in European History: The Interplay of Economic and Environmental Opportunities -- References -- The Environmental Dimension of Migration: The Case of Poland After World War II -- References -- Conclusions -- Concluding Remarks: Interdisciplinarity and Public Policy.