I think, therefore . . .

I am dangerous.

Globalisation, Ecological Crisis, and Dark Ages

SING C. CHEW
Explanations of long-term global transformations to date have been based overwhelmingly on socio-economic and political factors. As we increasingly question whether there are physical and environmental limits that would affect the reproduction of the world system, socio-economic and political factors might not necessarily be suf®cient to account for long-term global transformations.  What needs to be added to the overall explanation of long-term social change is the inclusion of ecological and climatological changes as important dimensions in our understanding of global transformations. Given these parameters, global
transformations are outcomes not only of political and economic interactions, but are also consequences of the relationship between society (culture) and nature, and climatological changes.  Over world history, the relationship between culture and nature has been punctuated with periods of ecological degradation and crisis.
   
Given these outcomes, the history of human civilisations can therefore also be described as the ``history of ecological degradation and crisis’’.

It is the latter moment, that of ecological crisis commonly known to historians as the Dark Ages, that is of  interest to us. For during these periods of Dark Ages or ecological crisis, we ®nd political-economic and ecological patterns and trajectories that are very different from crisis-free periods. In this regard, Dark Ages are times exhibiting ecological degradation, climatic changes, reorganisation of socio-economic and political structures, and hegemonic challenges. On this basis, Dark Ages offer us a window into moments of system crisis and transformations.
cont. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0953732022000016081