The termcollapsology orcollapse studies areneologisms used to designate thetransdisciplinary study of the risks of collapse of industrial civilization.[1] It is concerned with thegeneral collapse of societies induced by climate change, as well as "scarcity of resources,vast extinctions, and natural disasters."[2]
Although the concept of civilizational orsocietal collapse had already existed for many years, collapsology focuses its attention on contemporary,industrial, andglobalized societies.
The wordcollapsology has been coined and publicized byPablo Servigne [fr] andRaphaël Stevens in their essay:Comment tout peut s'effondrer. Petit manuel de collapsologie à l'usage des générations présentes[3] (How everything can collapse: A manual for our times),[4] published in 2015 in France.[5] It also developed into a movement whenJared Diamond's textCollapse was published.[2] Use of the term has spread, especially by journalists reporting on thedeep adaptation writings byJem Bendell.[6][7]
Collapsology is based on the idea that humans impact their environment in a sustained and negative way, and promotes the concept of an environmental emergency, linked in particular toglobal warming and thebiodiversity loss. Collapsologists believe, however, that the collapse of industrial civilization could be the result of a combination of different crises: environmental, but also economic, geopolitical, democratic, and others.[8]
Recent literature reviews have shown the maturation of collapsology as an academic field.Archaeologist Guy Middleton argues that collapse studies have evolved into "a more nuanced, self-critical, and sophisticated field" that moves beyondenvironmental determinism andapocalyptic narratives.[9] This evolution has led to applied collapsology, which draws fromarchaeology andancient history to inform contemporarysustainability policies andclimate change adaptation strategies, making collapse research increasingly relevant forresilience planning. Moreover, Brozović's comprehensive analysis of over 400 academic works identified five key scholarly conversations within collapse research: past collapses (historical andarchaeological studies), general explanations of collapse (theoretical frameworks), alternatives to collapse (resilience and adaptation strategies), fictional collapses (speculative fiction anddystopian literature), and future climate change and societal collapse (predictive and scenario-based studies).[10] Additionally, Shackelford and colleagues developed innovative methodologies for systematically reviewing the growing body ofexistential risk literature, including risks of human extinction andcivilizational collapse, usingcrowdsourcing andmachine learning techniques to handle the overwhelming volume of relevant research.[11]
The wordcollapsology is aportmanteau derived from theLatincollapsus, 'to fall, to collapse' and from the suffix-logy,logos, 'study', which is intended to name an approach of scientific nature.[12]
Since 2015 and the publication ofHow everything can collapse in French, several words have been proposed to describe the various approaches dealing with the issue of collapse:collapsosophy to designate thephilosophical approach,collapsopraxis to designate theideology inspired by this study, andcollapsonauts to designate people living with this idea in mind.[13][14]
Unliketraditional eschatological thinking, collapsology is based on data and concepts from contemporaryscientific research, primarily human understanding ofclimate change andecological overshoot as caused by human economic and geopolitical systems. It is not in line with the idea of a cosmic, apocalyptic "end of the world", but makes the hypothesis of the end of the humancurrent world, the "thermo-industrial civilization".
This distinction is further stressed by historianEric H. Cline by pointing out that while the whole world has obviously not ended, civilizations have collapsed over the course of history which makes the statement that "prophets have always predicted doom and been wrong" inapplicable to societal collapse.[15]
As early as 1972,The Limits to Growth,[16] a report produced by MIT researchers, warned of the risks of exponential demographic and economic growth on a planet with limited resources.
As asystemic approach, collapsology is based on prospective studies such asThe Limits of Growth, but also on the state of global and regional trends in the environmental, social and economic fields (such as theIPCC,IPBES orGlobal Environment Outlook (GE) reports periodically published by the Early Warning and Assessment Division of theUNEP, etc.) and numerous scientific works[3] as well as various studies, such as "A safe operating space for humanity";[17] "Approaching a state shift in Earth's biosphere",[18] published inNature in 2009 and 2012, "The trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration",[19] published in 2015 inThe Anthropocene Review, and "Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene",[20] published in 2018 in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.There is evidence to support the importance of collective processing of the emotional aspects of contemplating societal collapse, and the inherent adaptiveness of these emotional experiences.[21]
Even if this neologism only appeared in 2015 and concerns the study of the collapse of industrial civilization, the study of thecollapse of societies is older and is probably a concern of everycivilization. Among the works on this theme (in a broad sense) one can mention[citation needed] those ofBerossus (278 B.C.),Pliny the Younger (79 AD),Ibn Khaldun (1375),Montesquieu (1734),Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834),Edward Gibbon (1776),Georges Cuvier, (1821),Élisée Reclus (1905),Oswald Spengler (1918),Arnold Toynbee (1939),Günther Anders (1956),Samuel Noah Kramer (1956),Leopold Kohr (1957),Rachel Carson (1962),Paul Ehrlich (1969),Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (1971),Donella Meadows,Dennis Meadows &Jørgen Randers (1972),René Dumont (1973),Hans Jonas (1979),Joseph Tainter (1988),Al Gore (1992),Hubert Reeves (2003),Richard Posner (2004),Jared Diamond (2005),Niall Ferguson (2013).
In his monumental (initially published in twelve volumes) and highly controversial work of contemporary historiography entitledA Study of History (1972),Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975) deals with the genesis of civilizations (chapter 2), their growth (chapter 3), their decline (chapter 4), and their disintegration (chapter 5). According to him, the mortality of civilizations is trivial evidence for the historian, as is the fact that they follow one another over a long period of time.
In his bookThe Collapse of Complex Societies, the anthropologist and historianJoseph Tainter (born 1949) studies the collapse of various civilizations, including that of the Roman Empire, in terms ofnetwork theory,energy economics andcomplexity theory. For Tainter, an increasingly complex society eventually collapses because of the ever-increasing difficulty in solving its problems.
The Americangeographer,evolutionarybiologist andphysiologistJared Diamond (born 1937) already evoked the theme of civilizational collapse in his book calledCollapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, published in 2005. By relying on historical cases, notably theRapa Nui civilization, theVikings and theMaya civilization, Diamond argues that humanity collectively faces, on a much larger scale, many of the same issues as these civilizations did, with possibly catastrophic near-future consequences to many of the world's populations. This book has had a resonance beyond the United States, despite some criticism.[22] Proponents of catastrophism who identify themselves as "enlightened catastrophists" draw from Diamond's work, helping build the expansion of the relationalecology network, whose members believe that man is heading toward disaster.[1] Diamond'sCollapse approached civilizational collapse from archaeological, ecological, andbiogeographical perspectives onancient civilizations.[4]
Since the invention of the term collapsology, many French personalities gravitate in or around the collapsologists' sphere. Not all have the same vision of civilizational collapse, some even reject the term "collapsologist", but all agree that contemporary industrial civilization, and the biosphere as a whole, are on the verge of a global crisis of unprecedented proportions. According to them, the process is already under way, and it is now only possible to try to reduce its devastating effects in the near future. The leaders of the movement areYves Cochet andAgnès Sinaï of theMomentum Institute (athink tank exploring the causes of environmental and societal risks of collapse of the thermo-industrial civilization and possible actions to adapt to it), and Pablo Servigne and Raphaël Stevens who wrote the essayHow everything can collapse: A manual for our times.[4]
Beyond the French collapsologists mentioned above, one can mention:Aurélien Barrau (astrophysicist), Philippe Bihouix (engineer, low-tech developer),Dominique Bourg (philosopher),Valérie Cabanes (lawyer, seeking recognition of the crime ofecocide by the international criminal court),Jean-Marc Jancovici (energy-climate specialist), andPaul Jorion (anthropologist, sociologist).
In 2020 the French humanities and social science website Cairn.info published a dossier on collapsology titledThe Age of Catastrophe, with contributions from historianFrançois Hartog, economist Emmanuel Hache, philosopher Pierre Charbonnier, art historian Romain Noël, geoscientist Gabriele Salerno, and American philosopherEugene Thacker.[23]
Even if the term remains rather unknown in the Anglo-Saxon world, many publications deal with the same topic (for example the 2017 David Wallace-Wells article "The Uninhabitable Earth" and 2019 bestsellingbook of the same name, probably a mass-market collapsology work without using the term).[5] It is now gradually spreading on general[24] and scientific[25] English speakingsocial networks. In his bookAnti-Tech Revolution: Why and How,Ted Kaczynski also warned of the threat of catastrophic societal collapse.[26][27][28]
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