2018/06/01 by Adam Izdebski, Lee Mordechai, Sam White · 41 citations
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Environmental Science · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Ancient history #Byzantine architecture #Climate Change and Health Impacts #Climate change impacts on agriculture #Context (archaeology) #Development economics #Disaster Management and Resilience #Economics #Empire #History #Law #Political economy #Political science #Politics #Psychological resilience #Psychology #Resilience (materials science) #Social psychology #Sociology #State (computer science)
paper · pdf · doi:10.1007/s10745-018-0002-2
published in Human Ecology 46(3), 291-303 (Springer Science and Business Media LLC)
crossref issued 2018/06/01 · crossref published 2018/06/01 · crossref published-print 2018/06/01 · openalex publication_date 2018/06/01 · crossref created 2018/06/02 · crossref published-online 2018/06/03 · crossref deposited 2023/09/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref indexed 2026/08/04 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
We examine the social burden associated with resilience to environmental shocks in pre-modern societies. We argue that analyses of state-level interventions to mitigate the consequences of catastrophic events tend to isolate these measures from their larger social contexts and thereby overlook the uneven distribution of their burden across different groups. We use three cases of pre-modern societies in the northeastern Mediterranean - the sixth century Roman Empire, the tenth century Byzantine Empire, and the sixteenth century Ottoman Empire. We demonstrate how the adaptive processes that reinforced resilience at the state level incurred different burdens for those at lower levels of the social hierarchy. We found that some groups sustained losses while others gained unexpected benefits in the context of temporary systemic instability. We also found that although elites enjoyed enhanced buffers against the adverse effects in comparison with non-elites, this did not consistently guarantee them a better outcome. We conclude that the differentiated burden of resilience could in some cases entrench existing political or economic configurations, and in other cases, overturn them. Our case studies indirectly address the pressing issue of environmental justice.