Perspectives on Public Policy in Societal-Environmental Crises : : What the Future Needs from History.

• Superior document: Risk, Systems and Decisions
• Author: Izdebski, Adam.
• TeilnehmendeR: Haldon, John.; Filipkowski, Piotr.
• Place / Publishing House: Cham : : Springer International Publishing AG,, 2022.; ©2022.
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Series: Risk, Systems and Decisions
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (340 pages)

This is an open access book. Histories we tell never emerge in a vacuum, and history as an academic discipline that studies the past is highly sensitive to the concerns of the present and the heated debates that can divide entire societies. But does the study of the past also have something to teach us about the future? Can history help us in coping with the planetary crisis we are now facing? By analyzing historical societies as complex adaptive systems, we contribute to contemporary thinking about societal-environmental interactions in policy and planning and consider how environmental and climatic changes, whether sudden high impact events or more subtle gradual changes, impacted human responses in the past. We ask how societal perceptions of such changes affect behavioral patterns and explanatory rationalities in premodernity, and whether a better historical understanding of these relationships can inform our response to contemporary problems of similar nature and magnitude, such as adapting to climate change.

Table of Contents

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 Niño 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.