Joseph Tainter staat bekend om zijn interdisciplinaire benadering van de studie van maatschappelijke ineenstorting. Zijn werk onderzoekt hoe sociale complexiteit en energieverbruik de duurzaamheid van beschavingen beïnvloeden, van oude rijken tot hedendaagse systemen. Tainters analyse richt zich op het falen van probleemoplossende instituten en het punt waarop investeringen in complexiteit afnemende meeropbrengsten opleveren. Zijn wetenschap biedt diepgaande inzichten in de cyclische patronen van opkomst en verval die de menselijke geschiedenis vormgeven.
How did our thirst for energy, our technological prowess, and the end of easy
oil conspire to make the Deepwater Horizon oil spill likely? This book
explains what caused the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, from
which it will take decades to recover.
Political disintegration is a persistent feature of world history. The Collapse of Complex Societies, though written by an archaeologist, will therefore strike a chord throughout the social sciences. Any explanation of societal collapse carries lessons not just for the study of ancient societies, but for the members of all such societies in both the present and future. Dr. Tainter describes nearly two dozen cases of collapse and reviews more than 2000 years of explanations. He then develops a new and far reaching theory that accounts for collapse among diverse kinds of societies, evaluating his model and clarifying the processes of disintegration by detailed studies of the Roman, Mayan and Chacoan collapses.