Product Description

Deforestation, soil runoff, salination, pollution. While recurrent themes of the contemporary world, they are not new to us. In this broad sweeping review of the environmental impacts of human settlement and development worldwide over the past 5,000 years, Sing C. Chew shows that these processes are as old as civilization itself. With examples ranging from Ancient Mesopotamia to Malaya, Mycenaean Greece to Ming China, Chew shows that the processes of population growth, intensive resource accumulation, and urbanization in ancient and modern societies almost universally bring on ecological disaster, which often contributes to the decline and fall of that society. He then turns his eye to the development of the modern European world-system and its impact on the environment. Challenging us to change these long-term trends, Chew also traces the existence of environmental conservation ideas and movements over the span of 5,000 years. Can we do it? Look at Chew's evidence of the past five millennia and decide. Ideal for courses in environmental history, anthropology, and sociology, and world-systems theory.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1360606 in Books
• Published on: 2001-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

About the Author
Sing C. Chew is professor and chairperson of the Department of Sociology at Humboldt State University, in Arcata, California. Prior to his current appointment, he was the Associate Director in the Office of Vice-President (Resources), International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada. He has been a Research Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) in Singapore, and recently, Guest Researcher at the Human Ecology Division, Lund University, Lund, Sweden, where this book was completed. His most recent book is a co-edited volume: "The Underdevelopment of Development: Essays in Honor of Andre Gunder Frank."

Customer Reviews

World Ecological Degradation: Accumulation, Urbanization, and Deforestration 3000 B.C. - A.D. 2000
Using world systems theory as his springboard, Sing Chew develops a social history of the rise and fall of civilizations from the Bronze Age to the emergence of Europe as the center of the world economic system in the eighteenth century.
Chew's thesis is that cultures interact with nature and this interaction is transformative both for culture and nature.
While many social historians dwell on the lives of famous leaders of different societies, Chew demonstrates how social processes of accumulation accelerate destruction of nature and thus decline of civilizations based on resources derived from nature. He uses deforestation as an example of use of natural resources at a rate that is not sustainable.
World Ecological Degradation is a book based on excellent scholarhip. This book is particularly relevant to readers who want historical perspective on patterns of consumption that have lead to the current ecological crisis.

Underresearched and overreaching.
One does not need to write a book about the weather when he can simply stick his head out the window.

Although this work compiles some useful data and facts, it does little to answer the most important questions concerning societal collapse. It is not enough to say that rising populations and urban settlements tax the environment, this is obvious; the question is why do populations rise in the first place and why do these populations organize themselves in highly stratified systems with specialized economies necessitating great amounts of food surpluses and specialist produced craft goods?

Moreover, this work attempts to tackle a subject that anthropological archaeologists have been working on diligently for decades without referring to much of their work. For instance Flannery, 1972 isn't even in the bibliography and Culbert's synthesis of the vast amount of Mayan archaeology completed in the 1970's to get at these very ecological questions isn't either.

Under-researched and overreaching.
One does not need to write a book about the weather when he can simply stick his head out the window.

Although this work compiles some useful data and facts, it does little to answer the most important questions concerning societal collapse. It is not enough to say that rising populations and urban settlements tax the environment, this is obvious; the question is why do populations rise in the first place and why do these populations organize themselves in highly stratified systems with specialized economies necessitating great amounts of food surpluses and specialist produced craft goods?

Moreover, this work attempts to tackle a subject that anthropological archaeologists have been working on diligently for decades without referring to much of their work. For instance Flannery, 1972 isn't even in the bibliography and Culbert's synthesis of the vast amount of Mayan archaeology completed in the 1970's to get at these very ecological questions isn't either.