The Lawrence Jacobsen Library
Books Received (Primate-Science/PrimateLit)

Cetacean Societies: Field Studies of Dolphins and Whales

SUSTAINABILITY, HUMAN ECOLOGY, AND THE COLLAPSE OF COMPLEX SOCIETIES: 
ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY AND A 21ST CENTURY ADAPTATION


By Niccolo Caldararo


(From the Preface written by John Clammer of Sophia University, Tokyo)


Contemporary discussions of "sustainability," especially in the field of 
development studies, have oddly neglected to look to anthropology for 
potential solutions.  In fact, anthropology, and in this case economic 
anthropology, is the repository of a vast store of wisdom both about actual 
alternative and workable economic systems and about their evolution.  By 
drawing on this source, Caldararo not only builds a model of the evolution 
of human economies which cannot but stir up substantial debate, but also 
shows how economic anthropology provides a tool for the interrogation of 
economic theory, but very importantly ties economics to ecology.  It has 
been the rupture of this fundamental relationship that lies at the basis of 
much of our present crisis and the unsustainable economic patterns that 
humans have created, especially in the last two centuries.  By bringing 
together in a new configuration economic anthropology, ecology and culture 
history, Niccolo Caldararo not only proposes a new model of human social 
evolution, but equally importantly creates a methodology and a toolkit for 
speaking to, and against, our present economic and environmental situation. 
This does not remain here purely in the realm of theory, and the application 
of the model to Japan shows how economic anthropology can be taken out of 
the realm of the micro and applied equally to the large scale and the 
complex.  As Japan quite self-consciously often situates itself outside of 
the grand and universalizing narrative of (Western defined) "modernity," its 
very existence shows that alternative local knowledges, cosmologies and 
principles of economic action are not only theoretically possible, but like 
the societies that have mostly hitherto been the focus of economic 
anthropological debate -the small scale, the tribal and the peasant - exist 
in the real world.  This is a book that resituates economic anthropology 
squarely at the center of our most pressing contemporary issues, and does so 
in away that forces us to rethink our history, our future and our perennial 
relationship to the environment that ultimately sustains us and respect for 
which is the only basis for the sustainability of any form of human life and 
civilization.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR


(Taken from the back cover)


Niccolo Caldararo teaches in the Department of Anthropology at San Francisco 
State University, concentrating on Biological Anthropology and Medical 
Anthropology courses.  He also teaches in the Biology Department at City 
College of San Francisco.  He has published widely in the fields of artifact 
conservation, human ecology, and medical anthropology.  His research 
interests in anthropology began in the 1960s at the University of 
California, Berkeley in Primate behavior.  In the 1970s his work focused on 
material culture studies culminating in papers in journals such as "Nature" 
and "Radiocarbon."  By the 70s and early 80s his interests shifted to the 
role of disease in the evolution of human societies and in the 1990s, 
variation in human use of the environment, as well as variations of 
mitochondrial DNA and disease in human evolution.  His present work focuses 
on human avoidance behavior of disease in different cultural settings.


CONTENTS


List of Figures, page v


List of Tables, page vii


Preface by John Clammer, page ix


Acknowledgements, page xiii


Introduction, page 1


Part I


Part I: Anthropology and Economics: A Review, page 23


Chapter 1: Anthropology and the Cosmology of Modern Economics, page 25


Chapter 2: Wants, Needs and the Question of Surplus vs Wealth, page 105


Chapter 3: Complexity and Stability or Stagnation: Declining Returns and the 
Business Cycle, page 115


Chapter 4: Wealth, Consumption, Quality of Life and Standard of Living, page 
129


Chapter 5: The Great Debate: Economists and Anthropologists: The Market and 
Society, Continued, page 141


Part II


Part II: Introduction to Hominid Economics, page 151


Chapter 6: Introduction, page 153


Chapter 7: Forest Fires, Origins and Myths, page 155


Chapter 8: Traditional Peoples and Fire, page 163


Chapter 9: Climate and Fire: Assessing Time's Arrow and the Antiquity of 
Anthropogenic Fire, page 171


Chapter 10: Forest Management in Modern and Traditional Society, page 181


Chapter 11: The Degraded Environment and Homo Sapiens, page 185


Chapter 12: Co-evolutionary Processes and Environmental Exploitation, page 
189


Chapter 13: Makeup and Nature of Forests: Fire-Adapted Species vs 'Old 
Growth', page 193


Chapter 14: Determining Fire History: Fire Scars, Fire Histories and Thermal 
Alteration, page 195


Chapter 15: Insects, Biomass Reduction and Pesticides, page 199


Chapter 16: Conclusion: Forests and The Future of Man. Page 201


Part III


Part III: Cycles of Growth and Collapse versus the Possibility of 
Sustainable Societies, page 205


Chapter 17: Introduction, page 207


Chapter 18: The Problem of Population and the Nature of Human Society, page 
229


Chapter 19: Consumerism and Sustainability: Japan as an Example, page 235


Chapter 20: The Evolution of Modern Japan and its Transformation, page 245


Part IV


Part IV: The Role of Ideology and Religious Precepts in the Containment and 
Change of Society: A Modernist View, page 261


Chapter 21: Ideology and Religious Precepts and Motivations: Why People 
Work, page 263


Chapter 22: Fundamentalism versus Globalism, page 277


Part V


Part V: Conclusion, page 301


Bibliography, page 327


Index, page 397


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