Overview
- Presents a concise, systematic analysis of the key factors behind the acceleration of civil unrest across the world, and its major strategic and societal implications
- Provides an interdisciplinary integrated analysis of data across oil and energy production, food production, economic growth, austerity and debt, to determine how their interaction is undermining states a part of a wider global process of system failure
- Demonstrates for the first time the clear inaccuracies of media coverage of these issues due to predominance of fossil fuel-connected interests
- Sets out the key trends that are destabilising existing fossil fuel infrastructure and which could pave ground for a fundamental paradigm shift in economics, energy, technology, society and culture
- Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Energy (BRIEFSENERGY)
Part of the book sub series: Energy Analysis (ENERGYANALYS)
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Table of contents (11 chapters)
Reviews
“If you're new to the notions of peak oil / EROEI / collapse of industrial civilization, and/or would like to try and enlighten a friend that might be receptive to these issues, I'd say that you can't go wrong by picking up a copy … of Failing States, Collapsing Systems.” (From Filmers to Farmers, fromfilmerstofarmers com, February, 2017)
“Failing States, Collapsing Systems: BioPhysical Triggers of Political Violence, a thought-provoking new book by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed. … The book is only 94 pages (plus an extensive and valuable bibliography), but the author packs in a coherent theoretical framework as well as lucid case studies of ten countries and regions.” (Resilience, resilience.org, January, 2017)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Ahmed is a columnist for VICE’s science and technology magazine, Motherboard, and for the London-based digital news platform Middle East Eye. He is a former environment blogger at The Guardian where he reported on the geopolitics of interconnected environmental, energy and economic crises via his Earth Insight blog. He has also written and reported for The Independent, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Scotsman, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, Quartz, Prospect, New Statesman, Le Monde diplomatique, Raw Story, Asia Times, among many others.
Ahmed has twice won the Project Censored Award for his journalism, in 2014 for his story on the energy geopolitics behind the Ukraine crisis, and in 2013 for his article on food riots as a ‘new normal.’
Ahmed’s book, A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It (Pluto, 2010), was the first integrated peer-reviewed study of the intersection of climate change, energy depletion, food scarcity, economic instability, terrorism and state-militarisation. In 2010, he won the Routledge-GCP&S Essay Prize for his seminal paper presenting the social science framework for the book in the journal Global Change, Peace and Security, “The International Relations of Crisis and the Crisis of International Relations.”
Ahmed's previous books include The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry (Duckworth, 2006); The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism (Interlink, 2005); Behind the War on Terror: Western Secret Strategy and the Struggle for Iraq (New Society, 2003) and The War on Freedom: How & Why America was Attacked, September 11, 2001 (Progressive, 2002). The latter is archived in the ‘9/11 Commission Materials’ Special Collection at the US National Archives in Washington DC – it was among 99 books made available to each 9/11 Commissioner of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States to use during their investigations. He also contributed to the Coroner’s Inquest into the 7/7 London bombings, and has advised the Royal Military Academy Sandhust, British Foreign Office and US State Department, among other government agencies.
Nafeez's academic work revolves around the historical sociology and political ecology of mass violence in the context of civilizational systems, and focuses on bridging disciplinary divides across the natural and social sciences. He has taught international politics, contemporary history, empire and globalisation at the University of Sussex’s School of Global Studies and Brunel University’s Politics & History Unit. He is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at the Global Sustainability Institute of Anglia Ruskin University’s Faculty of Science and Technology.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Failing States, Collapsing Systems
Book Subtitle: BioPhysical Triggers of Political Violence
Authors: Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
Series Title: SpringerBriefs in Energy
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47816-6
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Energy, Energy (R0)
Copyright Information: The Author(s) 2017
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-47814-2Published: 16 December 2016
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-47816-6Published: 26 November 2016
Series ISSN: 2191-5520
Series E-ISSN: 2191-5539
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: VI, 110
Number of Illustrations: 34 illustrations in colour
Topics: Energy Policy, Economics and Management, Social Structure, Social Inequality, Economic Growth, Popular Science in Economics, Popular Science in Nature and Environment