Risks of Civilisational Collapse
Course content
As we enter the second quarter of the century, signs of impending collapse are everywhere. Runaway climate change, resource depletion, ecological collapse, and the Sixth Extinction just to name the most obvious. Indeed, this has culminated in the Anthropocene – a claim that humankind’s impact is sufficiently significant to mark a novel geological epoch. Yet, the Anthropocene is more descriptive than analytical, and fails to direct research and response against this myriad of contemporary challenges facing global civilization.
This course tackles the risks of civilizational collapse from a broad range of disciplines and perspectives to try to separate the hype and hyperbole from the plausible and probable. It takes departure from the outside perspective: we analyse responses to the Fermi Paradox to consider whether there are lessons we can glean from the apparent silence of the universe. Might it be that intelligent or technological civilizations consistently fail to meet certain challenges and criteria for continued existence? Or are there other solid reasons for the apparent silence, and might there be hope for the future of Earth-bound civilization?
We then step back to consider what it is that we are actually concerned about, and seek to preserve. Is it terrestrial life? Or intelligence? Could we be seeking to preserve humanity? And if so, is it a particular set of values that we want to protect into the future (despite axiological change)? It is important to be clear what it is that we want to persevere, and why.
With this background, we take a quick tour through Global Catastrophic and Existential Risks, the predecessor for this course. What are the concerns from this particular vantage point, and how might we frame critiques of its approach? Broadly, the field distinguished between ‘natural’ (or background) risks, and ‘anthropogenic’ (or technological) risks and we will consider both in turn in relation to the risks posed to civilizational collapse. In previous courses, we have found that Global Catastrophic and Existential Risks do not cover the types of issues and concerns that the class sought to protect and this imperfect mapping was a source of frustration and restriction, but we may come to a different conclusion.
We then step back in time to consider archaeological and historical examples of societal collapse. It is obvious to anybody who has ever visited the ruins of earlier societies that these rise and fall with a regularity that is almost rhythmic. We read Jared Diamond and Joseph Tainter, among others, to distill lessons from these smaller scale collapses in the past as a way of understanding our present predicament.
Moving to the present, we focus upon contemporary work around Planetary Boundaries which has proven to be a useful and intuitive concept to gauge the state of the planet and our impact upon its physical and ecological processes. We pair this with an analysis of the Anthropocene as a concept, and juxtapose this against the proposed Capitalocene which places capitalism as the driving force behind the myriad of risks of civilizational collapse.
The course finishes in an unorthodox fashion by leaving the last two sessions essentially open-ended and undetermined. This is intentional and appropriate, given that we do not and cannot know the risks of civilizational collapse. These open sessions allow us to pursue topics and threads from the course as it unfolds so that we can fill in some of the gaps or feel our way towards responses, or dig deeper into the literature in particular areas. It is impossible to know beforehand what captures the interest of the class, and what resources we will need to engage with that interest. As the course progresses, we will be keeping a running tally of the issues that we might address in these last sessions, as well as a catalogue of potential reading and resources that we will need for them.
Assessment for the course is an individual written assessment whereby the participants are given free-rein to choose their topics, approaches, and methodologies. Given the broad range of topics in this course, and the absence of an established literature or field proper, this assessment style enables participants to conduct their own, albeit limited, research project that reflects their interest in the area.
Sessions and Readings
- Introductory Explorations
- Fermi Paradox I: The Great Silence and its Lessons for Civilisational Collapse (Readings from: Milan M. Ćirković: ‘The Great Silence: The Science and Philosophy of Fermi’s Paradox’)
- Fermi Paradox II: Other Responses and Lessons for Civilisational Collapse (Readings from Duncan H. Forgan: ‘Solving Fermi's Paradox’)
- What are we concerned about? Life, Intelligence, Humanity… (Readings from James Lovelock ‘Gaia Hypothesis’, Erwin Schrodinger ‘What is Life’, and Merlin Sheldrake ‘Entangled Life’)
- Existential and Global Catastrophic Risk I: ‘Natural’ Risks (Readings from Nick Bostrom and Milan M Cirkovic: ‘Global Catastrophic Risks’)
- Existential and Global Catastrophic Risk II: ‘Anthropogenic’ Risks (Readings from Nick Bostrom and Milan M Cirkovic: ‘Global Catastrophic Risks’)
- Civilisational Collapse (Readings from Jared Diamond: ‘Collapse’)
- Collapse of Complex Societies (Readings from Joseph Tainter: ‘Collapse of Complex Societies)
- Planetary Boundaries I (Readings from the Stockholm Resilience Centre)
- Planetary Boundaries II (Readings from the Stockholm Resilience Centre)
- Anthropocene or Capitalocene: (Readings from Jason W. Moore: ‘Anthropocene or Capitalocene?’ and ‘Capitalism in the Web of Life’
- [Intentionally open session to be decided upon together as a class depending on what emerges as compelling or marginalized]
- Tying it altogether: What have we learnt, and what to explore next?
Full-degree students enrolled at the Department of Political Science, UCPH
- MSc in Security Risk Management
- MSc in Political Science
- MSc in Social Science
SRM Students are first priority
The course is open to:
- Exchange and Guest students from abroad (Master students only)
Knowledge:
- What is the Fermi Paradox? Why might it be relevant for thinking about the risks of civilizational collapse? What lessons might we learn from responses to it?
- What are we trying to preserve? Life? Intelligence? Organisational complexity? Technological sophistication? Humanity? …
- What are Global Catastrophic and Existential Risks? What lessons might we learn from this perspective? Does it articulate our concerns?
- Why have (complex) societies collapsed in the past? What are the common themes and lessons that we can learn? What are the limitations of extrapolating these historical examples?
- What are planetary boundaries and why are these relevant to civilizational collapse? Are these really limits, or are there other factors at play? What about tipping points and phase transitions and how these might interact with our thinking about planetary boundaries?
- Is the Anthropocene a relevant or useful conceptual framework? Or might we conceive of the problem instead as that of the Capitalocene? What are the foundational drivers of the risks of civilizational collapse?
- What are we missing in our discussions? What might be marginalised in the literature? Ignorance plagues these topics, so how might we explore those?
Skills:
- To intellectually engage with a broad range of disciplines, perspectives, approaches, and literatures related to the risks of civilizational collapse.
- To engage with the topics from the outside, from the inside, from the past, from the present, from the future.
- To articulate sustained critiques of the literature.
- To elaborate and develop upon ideas presented in the literature and in class.
- To explore the hidden, the marginalised, and the unknown.
- To play with concepts and ideas in an open-minded and flexible manner individually and collectively.
Competences:
- To fluently navigate between disciplines, literatures, and approaches.
- To become intellectually open and flexible when entertaining novel ideas and concepts; to assimilate, integrate, hold in parallel, or reject new ideas in a critical and reflective manner.
- To be able to respectfully articulate, communicate, and debate complex and potentially controversial ideas.
- To be fluent with a broader range of risks and responses, that are at a larger scale and unfolder over a longer term.
This course will be convened in Socratic Method style seminars.
Participants will have read the core material (or otherwise become
familiar with the core concepts and ideas). Sessions will be
devoted to picking apart the readings, complementing them with
knowledge and ideas and building a better understanding of what
those perspectives bring to the risks of civilizational collapse.
A core part of my personal pedagogy is to be a facilitator or
convenor, rather than a lecturer or teacher as such. My role will
be to guide the discussions, and supplement it with further
material where necessary, and to raise questions or underscore
certain points. My approach is that we all bring something towards
a better understanding of the topic, and by receding from the
centre-stage limelight, other participants will be able to better
articulate, develop, communicate, and debate their points of views
with the others. So far, this type of pedagogy has worked well with
this type of course. And indeed it was participant feedback that
led to this attempt to reconfigure the course in a substantial
manner.
Pragmatically, there are no digital devices during the sessions to
facilitate focus and engagement. We will do small group work,
followed by consolidation and feedback. The individual written
assessment form for the course is justified to provide the space
for a small research project on topics that piqued participant
interest in the first place. There is no ‘set literature’ to master
because this is not really a discipline or field, and so emphasis
is placed upon research question formulation, and critical
engagement with the particular area.
We draw from a wide range of literature, from that surrounding the Fermi Paradox through archaeological and historical accounts of civilizational collapse to consider contemporary notions of existential risk, planetary boundaries, and the Anthropocene and capitalocene.
Indicative readings are above in each section. These are usually entire books or edited collections, and I will be more targeted in the full syllabus for the course. It may also be that review articles and other resources (such as TED Talks) may better convey the material as well.
I will be making use of the Leganto Reading List service provided by the KU Library to facilitate student access to course resources to ensure that as much material as possible remains free and that we comply with copyright regulations.
Good command of English; open-minded and intellectually playful mindset.
When registered you will be signed up for exam.
- Full-degree students – sign up at Selfservice on KUnet
The dates for the exams are found here Exams – Faculty of Social Sciences - University of Copenhagen (ku.dk)
Please note that it is your own responsibility to check for overlapping exam dates.
- ECTS
- 7,5 ECTS
- Type of assessment
-
Home assignment
- Type of assessment details
- Free written assignment. See the section regarding examination in the program curriculum for more information on guidelines and scope.
- Aid
- All aids allowed
- Marking scale
- 7-point grading scale
- Censorship form
- No external censorship
- Re-exam
-
In the semester where the course takes place: Free written assignment
In subsequent semesters: Free written assignment
Criteria for exam assessment
- Grade 12 is given for an outstanding performance: the student lives up to the course's goal description in an independent and convincing manner with no or few and minor shortcomings
- Grade 7 is given for a good performance: the student is confidently able to live up to the goal description, albeit with several shortcomings
- Grade 02 is given for an adequate performance: the minimum acceptable performance in which the student is only able to live up to the goal description in an insecure and incomplete manner
- Category
- Hours
- Class Instruction
- 28
- Preparation
- 150
- Exam
- 28
- English
- 206
Kursusinformation
- Language
- English
- Course number
- ASRK22111U
- ECTS
- 7,5 ECTS
- Programme level
- Full Degree Master
- Duration
-
1 semester
- Placement
- Autumn
- Studyboard
- Study Board for Security Risk Management
Contracting department
- Department of Political Science
Contracting faculty
- Faculty of Social Sciences
Course Coordinator
- Hin-Yan Liu (11-707176358169763674717d48727d7a36737d366c73)
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