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Charles L. Redman
is easy for an archaeologist who focuses on long-term phenomena to suggest
that the panacea for a society is to reverse this priority or at least put long-term
planning and management in the forefront. I would like to do this, but I also
recognize that, in this competitive world, for a society to “reach” the long term
it has to be successful in a series of short-term situations. Hence this is not a
simple tradeoff; rather, one must discover long-term positive actions that are
also positive in the short term. History has demonstrated that many societies
are not able to find solutions that achieve both goals.
Diamond presents another way to conceptualize this fundamental tradeoff.
He sees many of these decisions coming down to a social group or a society
having to decide in the face or threat of environmental change which of its
normative beliefs, practices, and institutions to hold on to and which to give
up. It is not a trivial matter that one should be expected to effectively “adapt”
to the new conditions by giving up traditional ways of doing things because
many of these traditional ways of doing things may be the essence of the group’s
social identity or other functioning. Diamond retells how the late Medieval
Norse of Greenland held on to their agrarian ways instead of switching to their
neighboring Inuits’ mobile hunting strategies; this allowed them to retain their
social identity but led to their complete demographic collapse (Diamond 2005:
248–276; McGovern et al. 1988). This is not just a historic issue, of little contemporary
significance. Thomas Friedman suggests in The Lexus and the Olive
Tree (1999) that how to maintain traditional values while adopting efficient
foreign practices is a basic conundrum facing much of the modern world.
We can go further in linking the insights from the case studies to two
re lated conceptual frameworks: vulnerability and resilience theories. Nelson
and colleagues and several other authors have already started this, and I am
building on their foundations. A system’s vulnerability is related to three
primary factors: magnitude of the stress or shock, exposure of the system to
the stress or shock, and the system’s sensitivity to the stress or shock (Adger
2006; Turner et al. 2003). Concerning hazards such as volcanoes, hurricanes,
droughts, and floods, it is unlikely that action by the social group to be
impacted could significantly change the external input of the hazard. This does
not deny the long-term impact cumulative, local mitigation strategies might
have on diminishing the level of anthropogenically induced global environmental
change, only that the results of these effects will not be apparent in a
short time. However, mitigation and adaptation strategies aimed at reducing
the system’s exposure to the stress and strategies aimed at reducing its sensitivity
to the stress can have significant effects on reducing the impact. Minimizing
exposure through settlement location and mobility, enhanced architectural
precautions, and a diversity of food sources can reduce the vulnerability to
associated environmental changes. Equally important are efforts to strengthen
the system against the adverse impacts of hazards it will be exposed to, such as
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