The industrial society for the last century has been stoked by oil as the cheap energy source. However, ominous signs of oil depletion, in fulfillment of M. King Hubbert’s “Peak Oil” theory, may be eerily encroaching upon us and may portend “The Olduvai Theory’s” dramatic consequences. The implications of dwindling cheap oil supplies are catastrophic for maintaining industrial societies’ econom...

A civilization constitutes a durable social system of complementary traits. Some of the complementarities of any given civilization are between elements of “material” life and ones commonly treated as integral to “culture.” Identifying the mechanisms responsible for a civilization’s observed trajectory involves, therefore, causal relationships that cross the often-postulated “cultural–material”...

There are numerous views on how the West should be defined. In addition, there are just as many views on how one should define civilization. Just what is it that we refer to when we use the phrase ‘Western Civilization’? This is much more than an exercise in semantics. It is an important question especially if we accept the current war against terrorism as a manifestation of a clash of civiliza...

I n the Winter 2004-05 issue of Parameters, Philip Seib makes a laudable effort to establish the imperative for journalists, policymakers, and the American public to “undertake a more sophisticated analysis of how the world works.” This is critical because the analytical framework adopted by the media and policymakers has a direct effect on how they approach news coverage and frame discussions ...

In Ethiopian development policies, pastoralist areas have recently attracted more attention. Funding for (agro-)pastoralist development has increased significantly in the past decade. However, much debate and policy advice are still based on stereotypical representations of pastoralist areas as backward, prone to starvation and food insecurity, and hotbeds of violent conflict and contraband tra...