rV - GLOBAL SOCIOENVIRONMENTAL THOMASABEL • . V - BJORN BERGLUND CHANGE AND SUSTAINABILITY CHRIS CHASE-DUNN SINCE THE NEOLITHIC ALFRED CROSBY' CAROLE L. CRUMLEY JOHN DEARING ^ BERT DEVRIES NINA EISENMENGER . ANDRE GUNDER FRANK JONATHAN FRIEDMAN STEFAN GIUUM THOMAS HALL KARIN HOLMGREN ALFHORNBORG KRISTIAN KRISTIANSEN THOMAS MALM BETTY MEGGERS GEORGE MODELSKI EMIUO MORAN HELENA OBERG FRANK OLDFIELD ALF HORNBORG & SUSAN STONICH WILLIAM THOMPSON CAROLE CRUMLEY, Eds. PETER TURCHIN THE WORLD SYSTEM Z EARTH SYSTEM GLOBAL SOCIOENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE AND SUSTAINABILITY SINCE THE NEOLITHIC ALF HORNBORG & CAROLE L CRUMLEY, Eds. f c Press Walnut Creek, CA LEFT COAST PRESS, INC. 1630 North Main Street, #400 Walnut Creek, CA 94596 http://www. LCoastPress.com Copyright © 2006 by Left Coast Press, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The world system and the Earth system : global socioenvironmental change and sustainability since the Neolithic / edited by Alf Hornborg and Carole L. Crumley, p. cm. ISBN 1-59874-100-4 (alk. paper)— ISBN-13 978-1-59874-100-1 ISBN 1-59874-101-2 (pbk.: alk. paper)—ISBN-13 978-1-59874-101-8 1. Ecology. 2. Climatic changes. 3. Environmental sciences. 4. Human ecology. 5. Social ecology. I. Hornborg, Alf. II. Crumley, Carole L. QH541.W57 2006 304.2—dc22 2006020200 Printed in the United States of America This paper is acid free and meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISCO Z39.48-1992 <R 1997) (Permanence of Paper). Text design by Detta Penna Copyedited by Stacey Sawyer Cover design by Andrew Brozyna 09105432 Contents Preface Contributors Introduction: Conceptualizing Socioecological Systems Alf Hornborg LUND UNIVERSITY Part I Modeling Socioecological Systems: General Perspectives 1 Historical Ecology: Integrated Thinking at Multiple Temporal and Spatial Scales Carole L. Crumley UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA 2 Toward Developing Synergistic Linkages between the Biophysical and the Cultural: A Palaoenvironmental Perspective Frank Oldfield UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL 3 Integration of World and Earth Systems: Heritage and Foresight John A. Dearing UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL 4 World-Systems as Complex Human Ecosystems Thomas Abel TZU CHI UNIVERSITY 5 Lessons from Population Ecology for World-Systems Analyses of Long-Distance Synchrony Thomas D. Hall DEPAUW UNIVERSITY Peter Turchin UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT 6 Sustainable Unsustainability: Toward a Comparative Study of Hegemonic Decline in Global Systems Jonathan Friedman LUND UNIVERSITY Vlll CONTENTS Part II Case Studies of Socioenvironmental Change in Prehistory 109 7 Agrarian Landscape Development in Northwestern Europe since the Neolithic: Cultural and Climatic Factors behind a Regional/Continental Pattern 111 Bjorn E. Berglund LUND UNIVERSITY 8 Climate Change in Southern and Eastern Africa during the Past Millennium and Its Implications for Societal Development 121 Karin Holmgren STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITY Helena Oberg STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITY 9 World-Systems in the Biogeosphere: Urbanization, State Formation, and Climate Change Since the Iron Age 132 Christopher Chase-Dunn UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, RIVERSIDE Thomas D. Hall DEPAUW UNIVERSITY Peter Turchin UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT 10 Eurasian Transformations: Mobility, Ecological Change, and the Transmission of Social Institutions in the Third Millennium and the Early Second Millennium b .c .e. 149 Kristian Kristiansen UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG 11 Climate, Water, and Political-Economic Crises in Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt 163 William R. Thompson INDIANA UNIVERSITY 12 Ages of Reorganization 180 George Modelski UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON CONTKNTS 13 Sustainable Intensive Exploitation of Amazonia: Cultural, Environmental, and Geopolitical Perspectives 195 Betty J. Meggers SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 14 Regional Integration and Ecology in Prehistoric Amazonia: Toward a System Perspective 210 Alf Hornborg LUND UNIVERSITY Part III Is the World System Sustainable? Attempts toward an Integrated Socioecological Perspective 229 15 The Human-Environment Nexus: Progress in the Past Decade in the Integrated Analysis of Human and Biophysical Factors 231 Emilio F. Moran INDIANA UNIVERSITY 16 In Search of Sustainability: What Can We Learn from the Past? 243 Bert J. M. de Vries BUREAU FOR ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT, BILTHOVEN 17 Political Ecology and Sustainability Science: Opportunity and Challenge 258 Susan C. Stonich UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA Daniel S. Mandell UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA 18 No Island is an "Island": Some Perspectives on Human Ecology and Development in Oceania 268 Thomas Malm LUND UNIVERSITY 19 Infectious Diseases as Ecological and Historical Phenomena, with Special Reference to the Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919 280 Alfred VV. Crosby UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, AUSTIN X CONTKNTS 20 Evidence from Societal Metabolism Studies for Ecological Unequal Trade 288 Nina Eisenmcnger UNIVERSITY OF KLAGENFURT Stefan Giljum SUSTAINABLE EUROPE RESEARCH INSTITUTE 21 Entropy Generation and Displacement: The Nineteenth-Century Multilateral Network of World Trade 303 Andre Guilder Frank WORLD HISTORY CENTER, BOSTON References 317 Index 381 Preface This book is one of two volumes emerging from the conference on World- System History and Global Environmental Change, arranged by the Human Ecology' Division of Lund University, Lund, Sweden, on September 19-22, 2003. I gratefully acknowledge generous funding from the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation, which covered the bulk of our expenses, as well as additional funding from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, the Swedish Research Council, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, and the Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agriculture and Spatial Planning. I also want to thank Christian Isendahl for efficiently handling the practical details of conference organization, my co-editor Carole Crumley, for competently commenting on several chapters that particularly required her expertise in historical ecology, and Bob Denemark for invaluable assistance in editing Guilder Frank’s posthumous chapter. Finally, I thank Jennifer Collier, Stacey Sawyer, and Detta Penna for helping me turn a pile of papers into a book. A lf Hornborg Contributors Thomas Abel is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Tzu Chi University in Taiwan. • Bjorn E. Berglund is a paleoecologist and Professor Emeritus of Quaternary Geology at Lund University Sweden. • Christopher Chase-Dunn is Distinguished Professor of Sociology' and Director of the Institute for Research on World-Systems at the University of California, Riverside. • Alfred W. Crosby is Professor Emeritus of American Studies, History, and Geography at the University of Texas, Austin. • Carole L. Crumley is Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. • John A. Dearing is an environmental scientist and Professor of Physical Geography at the University of Liverpool, England. • Bert J. M. de Vries lias a background in theoretical chemistry and is senior scientist at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and part-time Professor of Global Change and Energy at the Copernicus Institute for Sustainable Development and Innovation,Utrecht University, The Netherlands. • Nina Eisenmenger is a researcher and lecturer at the Institute of Social Ecology, Klagenfurt University Austria. • Andre Guilder Frank (1929- 2005) was an associate of the Luxembourg Institute for European and International Studies, and Senior Fellow at the World History Center, Northeastern University Boston. • Jonathan Friedman is Directeur d’etudcs at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes on Sciences Sociales in Paris and Professor of Social Anthropology at Lund University, Sweden. • Stefan Giljum is an ecological economist and researcher at the Sustainable Europe Research Institute, Vienna, Austria. • Thomas D. Hall holds the Lester M. Jones Chair in Sociology at DePauw University in Grcencastle, Indiana. • Karin Holmgren is Professor of Physical Geography at Stockholm University, Sweden. • Alf Hornborg is an anthropologist and Professor of Human Ecology at Lund University, Sweden. • Kristian Kristiansen is Professor of Archeology at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. • Thomas Malm is a biologist and anthropologist and Associate Professor at the Human Ecology Division, Lund University, Sweden. • Daniel S. Mandell did graduate work in anthropology and environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Berkeley. • Betty J. Meggers is director of the Latin American Archeology Program, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC. • George Modelski is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Washington, Seattle. • Emilio F. Moran is the James H. Rudy Professor of Anthropology, Professor of Environmental Sciences, and Adjunct Professor of Geography at Indiana University, Bloomington. • Helena Oberg is a PhD candidate in Physical Geography at Stockholm University, Sweden. • Frank Oldfield is a physical geographer and Professor Emeritus at the University of Liverpool, England. • Susan C. Stonich is Professor of Anthropology, Environmental Studies, Geography, and Marine Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. • William R. Thompson is Rogers Professor of Political Science at Indiana