Coping With Crisis The Resilience And Vulnerability Of Pre Industrial Settlements
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Coping with Crisis: The Resilience and Vulnerability of Pre-Industrial Settlements
Why in the pre-industrial period were some settlements resilient and stable over the long term while other settlements were vulnerable to crisis? Indeed, what made certain human habitations more prone to decline or even total collapse, than others? All pre-industrial societies had to face certain challenges: exogenous environmental hazards such as earthquakes or plagues, economic or political hazards from ’outside’ such as warfare or expropriation of property, or hazards of their own-making such as soil erosion or subsistence crises. How then can we explain why some societies were able to overcome or negate these problems, while other societies proved susceptible to failure, as settlements contracted, stagnated, were abandoned, or even disappeared entirely? This book has been stimulated by the questions and hypotheses put forward by a recent ’disaster studies’ literature - in particular, by placing the intrinsic arrangement of societies at the forefront of the explanatory framework. Essentially it is suggested that the resilience or vulnerability of habitation has less to do with exogenous crises themselves, but on endogenous societal responses which dictate: (a) the extent of destruction caused by crises and the capacity for society to protect itself; and (b) the capacity to create a sufficient recovery. By empirically testing the explanatory framework on a number of societies between the Middle Ages and the nineteenth century in England, the Low Countries, and Italy, it is ultimately argued in this book that rather than the protective functions of the state or the market, or the implementation of technological innovation or capital investment, the most resilient human habitations in the pre-industrial period were those than displayed an equitable distribution of property and a well-balanced distribution of power between social interest groups. Equitable distributions of power and property were the underlying conditions in pre-industrial societies that all
Strategies, Dispositions and Resources of Social Resilience
The concept of resilience, which originally emerged in psychology, has spread to numerous disciplines and was further developed particularly in social ecology. Resilience experiences an ongoing growing reception in the humanities and historical and social sciences as well, including heterogenic approaches on how to conceptually frame resilience. Common to these approaches is, that resilience becomes topical in the context of analysing phenomena and processes of the ‘resistibility’ of certain (socio-historical) units or actors which are perceived as being faced with various constellations of disruptive change. In this context, resilience is not only taken to mean the opposite of vulnerability, but at the same time, resilience and vulnerability are understood as complementary concepts. From this perspective, vulnerability is a necessary condition of resilience and vice versa. Against this background, the present volume provides a preliminary appraisal of socio-scientific and historical resilience research by assembling contributions of authors originating from different disciplines. Thus, it fosters an interdisciplinary discussion on the theoretical and analytical potentials as well as the empirical applicability of the concept of resilience. ContentsStrategies, Dispositions and Resources – Theoretical contributions • Medieval case studies • Reflections and General Comments The EditorsDr. Martin Endreß is Professor for General Sociology at the University of Trier. Dr. Lukas Clemens is Professor for Medieval History at the University of Trier. Dr. Benjamin Rampp is research assistant for General Sociology at the University of Trier.
The European Crisis of the 1590s
First published in 1985, The European Crisis of the 1590s (now with a new preface by Peter Clark on the current literature on crisis and catastrophe) investigates in depth for the first time the origin and scale of the critical problems of the 1590s and their impact on European society. Among the contributors are many leading scholars working on European history during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The book is divided into two parts. The first analyses the particular mesh of difficulties in different areas of Europe, covering all the major countries—England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and Italy. The second part discusses more general issues such as the impact of war and the role of the state. From a systematic, comparative examination of one period of acute difficulty and upheaval we gain valuable insights into the general nature of the economic and social crises which recurred in the early modern era. Important and vivid light is also shed on the long-term social, economic, and institutional changes affecting European countries c.1550-c.1650. General findings are emphasised in the editorial introduction and in the wide-ranging conclusion by J.H. Eliott which offers a powerful evaluation of the historical significance of the 1590s. This volume will be essential reading for academics, students and others interested in the economic, social, and political history of Britain and continental Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It will also be valuable for all those working in the new field of crisis and catastrophe.