Re: The Vulnerable Planet (was Re: suburbia)

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

Lou says:

>  >In your own words, "Not only is the archaelogical record subject to
> > multiple interpretations, the hieroglyphic language is not entirely
> > decipherable despite the best efforts of scholars like Robert J.
> > Sharer," so there's no last word here.
>
> It is the last word in the sense that Sharer is the most respected scholar
> on such topics. It is not the last word in the sense that it is very
> difficult to ever establish with moral certainty and beyond a shadow of a
> doubt what happened to the classic Mayan civilization. In any case, the
> notion of Mayan "anti-ecological" practices is mostly taken up by rightwing
> cranks like Shephard Krech nowadays.

My idea is that there are two different dynamics of ecological
destruction, one peculiar to pre-capitalist tributary modes of
production in the Malthusian cycle, the other unique to the
capitalist mode of production.  The former (the tributary mode)
didn't harm the environment as much as the latter, since the former
had a built-in Malthusian check on the population (famine/disease, no
knowledge of modern public health, no modern medicine, etc.) with no
drive to M-C-M' & compulsion to innovate the means of ecological
destruction, unlike the capitalist mode.

>  >My point is simply that if
> > you want to know the dynamic internal to the tributary mode of
> > production in the New World, it's best to study it before its contact
> > with the Europeans.  I'd be very interested in Sharer's own theory of
> > how Mayan civilization collapsed, despite the possibility that
> > intensive agriculture was practiced by the Mayas.  Also, I'd like an
> > explanation as to why intensive agriculture is necessarily a blow
> > against all "ecological disaster" theories.
>
> You can order Sharer's book from amazon.com:
>
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0804723109/qid=993756214/sr=1-4/ref=s
> c_b_4/102-3673537-5938534

Will look into the book, but I'd appreciate if you can briefly sum up
Sharer's own theory.

Yoshie