Societal collapse

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Societal collapse is the large scale breakdown or long term decline of the culture, civil institutions or other major characteristics of a society or a civilization, temporarily or permanently. The breakdown of cultural and social institutions is perhaps the most common feature of collapse. Although societal collapse has previously been viewed as an endpoint for a civilization, the phenomenon is only a description of the processes of change in that civilization. Societal collapse is certainly not a benign social process, but societies may not end or die when they collapse. Instead, they may adapt and be born anew. Collapse may also result in a degree of empowerment for the most disenfranchised sections of the collapsing society.

The most common factors contributing to the collapse of society are environmental, social and cultural. Usually societal collapse results from the convergence of all three factors, but in many instances one factor may be the dominant cause. In many cases a natural disaster (e.g. tsunami, earthquake, massive fire) may wreak such havoc on a culture that it can no longer sustain itself through past social processes and it undergoes massive change. In other instances significant inequity in the social structure may result in the lower classes rising up and taking power from a smaller wealthy elite. Societal collapse may occur over a relatively short period of time, or as a result of an event or series of events which lead to significant depopulation (e.g. natural disaster, war, genocide, famine, pandemic). The groups which comprise a society may also make a deliberate or voluntary decision to disperse or relocate which in effect amounts to the "collapse" of that society, or presents to later archaeologists or researchers as a collapse.

Societal collapse has recurred throughout history and is an aspect of the human condition which may await all human societies. The modern day interest in survivalism is concerned in part with preparing for the possible collapse of contemporary society.

Societal dynamics

Societal collapse is often linked to a shift away from sedentarism. Sedentary social organization eventually leads to the depletion of important non-renewable or only slowly renewing resources (in most cases). Sedentarism also enables a gross expansion of population of the society and its social institutions. Long distance trade, domestication of flora and fauna, increase in task specialization as well as the stratification of society are the most salient features of a sedentary society. Sedentary societies, unlike nomadic hunter-gatherers, are not self limiting and often come to overuse and dominate that land on which they exist. As population grows diminishing returns of various foodstuffs begin to threaten social complexity, and a Malthusian collapse can occur.

Thomas Homer-Dixon^[1] has recently suggested that societal collapse occurs as a result of a reduction in the Energy Return on Energy Invested or EROEI. This is the measure of the amount of energy needed to secure a source of energy. Societal collapse occurs whenever the EROEI approaches 1:1. If it falls below 1:1, those attempting to harvest the energy source have insufficient energy to maintain themselves, and famine results. An EROEI of more than 1 is necessary to provide sufficient energy for socially important tasks, such as constructing buildings, maintaining infrastructure, and supporting the social elite upon which a society depends. The EROEI figure also determines the ratio between the number of people engaged in energy extraction compared to the total population. For example in the pre-modern world, it was often the case that 80% of the population was employed in agriculture to feed a population of 100%. In modern times, the use of fossil fuels with an exceedingly high EROEI has enabled 100% of the population to be fed with only 4% of the population employed in agriculture. Diminishing returns of an unsustainable EROEI, Homer Dixon proposes, leads to societal collapse.

Manifestations of societal collapse

Societal collapse occurs in one of two ways:

Its adaptive capacity is reduced by a sharp increase in population or social complexity, leading to a destabilization of social institutions and eventual massive shifts in population and social dynamics. In nearly all cases civilizations revert to less complex, less centralized and a more simple technological or socio-political forms, characteristic of a Dark Age. Examples of such societal collapse are: the Hittite Empire, the Mycenaean civilization, the Western Roman Empire, the Mauryan and Gupta states of India, the Mayas, the Angkor in Cambodia, and the Han and Tang dynasties in China.

Alternately, it may be gradually incorporated into a more dynamic, more complex inter-regional social structure. This happened in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, the Levantine cultures, the Eastern Roman Empire, the Mughal and Delhi Sultanates in India, Sung China, the Aztec culture in Mesoamerica, the Inca culture in South America, and the modern civilizations of China, Japan, and India as well as many modern states in the Middle East and Africa.

Societal collapse manifests itself in various ways:

Complex societies stratified on the basis of class, gender, race or some other salient factor become much more homogeneous or horizontally structured. In many cases past social stratification slowly becomes irrelevant following collapse and societies become more egalitarian.

One of the most characteristic features of complex civilizations (and in many cases the yardstick to measure complexity) is a high level of job specialization. The most complex societies are characterized by artisans and tradespeople who specialize intensely in a given task. Indeed, the rulers of many past societies were hyper-specialized priests or priestesses who were completely supported by the work of the lower classes. During societal collapse the social institutions supporting such specialization are removed and people tend to become more generalized in their work and daily habits.

As power becomes decentralized people tend to be more self-regimented and have many more personal freedoms. In many instances of collapse there is a slackening of social rules and etiquette. Geographically speaking, communities become more parochial or isolated. For example, following the collapse of the Mayan civilization many Maya returned to their traditional hamlets, moving away from the large cities that had been the centers of the empire.

Epiphenomena, institutions, processes, and artifacts are all manifest in the archaeological record in abundance in large civilizations. After collapse, types of artifacts left or evidence of epiphenomena and institutions changes dramatically as people are forced to adopt more self-sufficient lifestyles.

Societal collapse is almost always associated with a decline in population densities. In extreme cases, the collapse in population is so severe that the society disappears entirely, such as happened with the Greenland Vikings, or a number of Polynesian islands. In less extreme cases, populations are reduced until a demographic balance is re-established between human societies and the depleted natural environment. A classic example is the case of Ancient Rome which had a population of about 1.5 million during the reign of Trajan, but had only 15,000 inhabitants by the 9th century.

Models of societal response

According to Joseph Tainter, in his book The Collapse of Complex Societies (1990), societies that inevitably collapse adhere to one or more of the following three models in the face of collapse:

1. The Dinosaur: The best example is a large scale society in which resources are being depleted at an exponential rate and yet nothing is done to rectify the problem because the ruling elite are unwilling or unable to adapt to said changes. In such examples rulers tend to oppose any solutions that diverge from their present course of action. They will favor intensification and commit an increasing number of resources to their present plans, projects and social institutions.

2. Runaway Train: An example would be a society that only functions when growth is present. Societies based almost exclusively on acquisition, including pillage or exploitation, cannot be sustained indefinitely. The societies of the Assyrians and the Mongols, for example, both fractured and collapsed when no new conquests were forthcoming. Tainter argues that Capitalism can be seen as an example of the Runaway Train model as it requires whole economies, individual sectors, and companies to constantly grow on a three month basis. Current methods of resource extraction and food production may be unsustainable, however, the philosophy of consumerism and planned obsolescence encourage the purchase of an ever increasing number of goods and services to sustain the economy.

3. House of Cards: In this aspect of Tainter's model societies that grow to be so large and include so many complex social institutions that they are inherently unstable and prone to collapse.

An example of Tainter's model

These things do not necessarily act independently. Usually they are interconnected occurrences that reinforce each other. For example, leaders on Easter Island saw a rapid decline of trees but ruled out change (i.e. The Dinosaur). Timber was used as rollers to transport and erect large statues called moai as a form of religious reverence to their ancestors. Reverence was believed to result in a more prosperous future. It gave the people an impetus to intensify moai production (i.e. Runaway Train). Easter Island also has a fragile ecosystem because of its isolated location (i.e. House of Cards). Deforestation led to soil erosion and insufficient resources to build boats for fishing or tools for hunting. Competition for dwindling resources resulted in warfare and many casualties. Together these events led to the collapse of the civilization.

It is worth noting that mainstream interpretations of the history of Easter Island also include the slave raiders who abducted a large proportion of the population, and epidemics that killed most of the survivors, see Easter Island History#Destruction of society and population.

Toynbee’s theory of decay

The British historian Arnold J. Toynbee, in his 12-volume magnum opus A Study of History, theorized that all civilizations pass through several distinct stages: genesis, growth, time of troubles, universal state, and disintegration.

Toynbee argues that the breakdown of civilizations is not caused by loss of control over the environment, over the human environment, or attacks from outside. Rather, it comes from the deterioration of the "Creative Minority," which eventually ceases to be creative and degenerates into merely a "Dominant Minority" (who forces the majority to obey without meriting obedience). He argues that creative minorities deteriorate due to a worship of their "former self," by which they become prideful, and fail to adequately address the next challenge they face.

He argues that the ultimate sign a civilization has broken down is when the dominant minority forms a "Universal State," which stifles political creativity. He states:

First the Dominant Minority attempts to hold by force—against all right and reason—a position of inherited privilege which it has ceased to merit; and then the Proletariat repays injustice with resentment, fear with hate, and violence with violence when it executes its acts of secession. Yet the whole movement ends in positive acts of creation—and this on the part of all the actors in the tragedy of disintegration. The Dominant Minority creates a universal state, the Internal Proletariat a universal church, and the External Proletariat a bevy of barbarian war-bands.

He argues that, as civilizations decay, they form an "Internal Proletariat" and an "External Proletariat." The Internal proletariat is held in subjugation by the dominant minority inside the civilization, and grows bitter; the external proletariat exists outside the civilization in poverty and chaos, and grows envious. He argues that as civilizations decay, there is a "schism in the body social," whereby:

abandon and self-control together replace creativity, and
truancy and martyrdom together replace discipleship by the creative minority.

He argues that in this environment, people resort to archaism (idealization of the past), futurism (idealization of the future), detachment (removal of oneself from the realities of a decaying world), and transcendence (meeting the challenges of the decaying civilization with new insight, as a Prophet). He argues that those who Transcend during a period of social decay give birth to a new Church with new and stronger spiritual insights, around which a subsequent civilization may begin to form after the old has died.

Toynbee's use of the word 'church' refers to the collective spiritual bond of a common worship, or the same unity found in some kind of social order.

Examples of civilizations and societies which have collapsed

By the first method

By the second method

Ancient Egypt
Ancient Babylonia
Ancient Levant
Classical Greece
Eastern Roman Empire (Medieval Greek) of the Byzantines
Modern North East Asian civilisations, Hindu and Mughal India
Chin, Sung, Mongol and Manchu China
Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan
Aztecs and Incas

Sites which are believed to represent "societal collapse"

References

^ Homer-Dixon, Thomas (2007), "The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization" (Knopf, Canada)