Summary and Commentaries on Joseph Tainter’s 1988 “The Collapse of Complex Societies”




Tainter’s project here is to articulate his grand unifying theory to explain the strange and disturbing fact that every complex civilisation the world has ever seen has collapsed . It does not provide the final answer to the question of how civilizations or societies collapse but it represents an important step along the way to that answer.

To get an idea of the impact this book has had both among scholars and on the general public one has only to look at its publishing record. It was written by an academic for academics and published by a university press (Cambridge no less) yet it is now in its fourteenth printing since its initial release in 1988.

Tainter first elegantly disposes of the usual theories of social decline : 1. Depletion of vital resources, 2. Discovery of brand new resources, 3. Catastrophes, 4. Insufficient response to circumstances, 5. Competition from other complex societies, 6. Intruders, 7. Class conflict, societal contradictions, elite mismanagement/misbehavior, 8. Social dysfunction, 9. Mystical, 10. Chance concatenation of bad things.

He then lays out his theory of decline: as societies become more complex, the costs of meeting new challenges increase, until there comes a point where extra resources devoted to meeting new challenges produce diminihsing and then negative returns. He looks at a score of societal collapses, focusing on three: Rome, the Maya, and the Chacoan Indians of the American Southwest.

According to Tainter, as these societies solved problems – food production, security, public works – they became increasingly complex. Social complexity can include differentiated social and economic roles, reliance on symbolic and abstract communication, and the existence of a class of information producers and analysts (i.e. system administrators) who are not involved in primary resource production. Such complexity requires a substantial “energy” subsidy (meaning resources, or other forms of wealth). When a society confronts a “problem,” such as a shortage of or difficulty in gaining access to energy, it tends to create new layers of bureaucracy, infrastructure, or social class to address the challenge. While “the number of challenges with which the Universe can confront a society is, for practical purposes, infinite. Complex societies need to keep on increasing their level of complexity in order to survive new challenges” . . . . When new challenges keeps coming, Tainter argues, the society wastefully expends its resources trying to maintain its bloated condition until it will eventually be unable to muster the necessary resources to deal with the crisis, and will collapse/revert– in a painful and unhappy way– to a much simpler way of life (smaller, simpler, more efficient units).

Consider this example: A simple hunter-gatherer society with limited agriculture (i.e. garden plots) is faced with a problem, such as a seasonal drop in food production (or an invasion from its neighbours who have the same problem and are coming over for food). The bottom line is, this society faces an energy shortage. This society could respond to the food crisis by either voluntarily declining in numbers (die-off, and unlikely) or by increasing production. Most societies choose the latter. In order to increase production, this society will need to either expand territorially (invade somebody else)or increase agricultural production . In either case, this investment can pay off substantially in either increased access to already-produced food or increased food production.

But the hunter-gatheres of the above example incur costs as they try to solve their food-shortage problem. If they conquer their neighbours, they have to garrison those territories, thus raising the cost of government. If they start agriculture on a larger or more intense scale in their own territories, they have to create a new class of citizens to man the farms, distribute and store the grain, and guard it from animals and invaders. In either case, the increases in access to energy (food) are offset somewhat by the increased cost of social complexity.

But, as the society gets more complex to confront newer challenges, the returns on these increases in complexity diminish. Eventually, the costs of maintaining garrisons is so high that both home and occupied populations revolt, and welcome the invaders with their simpler way of life and their lower taxes. Or, agricultural challenges (a massive drought, or degradation of soils) are so great that the society cannot muster the energy reserves to deal with them. At that point, the society fragmented into smaller units.

In the case of the Roman empire, we often assume that it’s collapse was a catastrophe for everyone involved. Tainter points out that it can be seen as a very rational preference of individuals at the time, many of whom were actually better off (all but the elite, presumably). Archeological evidence from human bones indicates that average nutrition actually improved after the collapse in many parts of the former Roman Empire. Average individuals may have benefited because they no longer had to invest in the burdensome complexity of empire.

There is a very simple reason for this: we solve the easiest problems first. Consider more up to date example : Take oil, for example. In 1950, spending the energy equivalent of one barrel of oil in searching for more oil yielded 100 barrels in discovered oil. In 2004, the world’s five largest energy companies found less oil energy than they expended in looking for that energy. The per-dollar return on R&D investment has dropped for fifty years. In education, additional investments in programs, technology etc. no longer produce increases in outcomes. In short, industrial society is looking at steadily fewer returns on its investments in both non-human and human capital.

“In a remarkably candid passage he characterizes the survivalist movement in the U.S. (excluding the lunatic fringe element) as being a rational response to concerns about the viability of our current political system. The same goes for those in the self reliance, grow you own food movement. “The whole concern with collapse and self-sufficiency may itself be a significant social indicator, the expectable scanning behavior of a social system under stress . . . . “

The modern world’s “arms race of complexity” makes some uncomfortable suggestions about our own future, and the scary thing about this deeply thoughtful and thoroughly researched book is its contention that the future, for all our knowledge and technology, might be an awful lot like the past.

Can you have an advanced society that is immune to complexity’s dangers? The answer in one of the reviewer’s opinion is a qualified `yes’ but such a society would have to be organized very differently with far less interdependence, and hence fragility, than anything we now know. If world events (terrorism, Iran, North Korea, etc.) continue along the track they have taken in recent years, we may soon, for better or worse, have the opportunity to find out.

Because of globalization, any collapse would affect all industrialized countries together. Oil running out might be the end of our era of complexity, an anomaly in human history, but we still have time to make changes that could forestall collapse. If “north peoples” like us don’t understand that our marginal rate of return has headed south, they’re missing Tainter’s point.

This summary and commentaries were combined from the following sources :

  1. Reviews on The Collapse of Complex Societies at Amazon.com
  2. Joseph Tainter at Wikipedia

Keywords : ecosocial crisis, complexity, complex systems, evolution, bureaucracy, government, democracy, political economy, problem solving, sustainability, economic growth, industrialism, consumerism, energy, cheap oil, peak oil, appropriate science and technology, voluntary simplicity
(use search box to list entries with one of these keywords)

About this entry

You’re currently reading “Summary and Commentaries on Joseph Tainter’s 1988 “The Collapse of Complex Societies”,” an entry on Nooventures

Published::
4.13.07 / 10am
Category:
Appropriate Science and Technology, Democratic Democracy, Ecosocionomics, Global Governance, Means, Paths, Ends
Tags: