复杂社会的崩溃

by Joseph A. Tainter, 邵旭东 (Translator)

本书描述了历史上从中国西周到乌干达北部的伊克族等二十多个由简单社会进化到相对复杂的社会后却走向崩溃的案例，并回顾了两千多年来后人对于这些崩溃现象的解释。作者还阐释了复杂社会的性质，并通过在社会政治复杂化领域具有广泛代表性的罗马文明、玛雅文明、查科文明从兴起到衰落的详细研究，为理解崩溃现象提供了一个新的视角，那就是从社会复杂化投资的边际回报（即每增加一个单位的劳动投入所带来的产量增加的回报）来判断一个社会是处于向更高阶段发展的复杂化进程中，还是正走向相反的崩溃进程。

299 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 2010

About the author

Joseph Tainter studied anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley and Northwestern University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1975. As of 2012 he holds a professorship in the Department of Environment and Society at Utah State University. His previous positions include Project Leader of Cultural Heritage Research, Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, Albuquerque, New Mexico and Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico.

Tainter has written or edited many articles and monographs. His arguably best-known work, The Collapse of Complex Societies (1988), examines the collapse of Maya and Chacoan civilizations, and of the Western Roman Empire, in terms of network theory, energy economics and complexity theory. Tainter argues that sustainability or collapse of societies follow from the success or failure of problem-solving institutions and that societies collapse when their investments in social complexity and their "energy subsidies" reach a point of diminishing marginal returns. He recognizes collapse when a society rapidly sheds a significant portion of its complexity.