Why Societies Collapse ?

Societies collapse. Why? This session invites scholars from various worldviews, schools of theory, and empirical approaches, e.g. historical approaches, analysis of contemporary data, and comparative and case studies, to answer the question of why societies collapse. The inspiration of the session comes from the book, All Societies Die: How to Keep Hope Alive (Cohn, 2021). The aim of the session is twofold. First, through debate we seek a synthesis of ideas and approaches based on the best available empirical evidence. Such evidence might include not only historical falls of states and empires, but disastrous economic declines, periods of sustained violence or any other backward steps in the improvement of human welfare. Second, we ask participants to suggest how to prevent modern societies from succumbing to the catastrophic collapses of their forbearers.