Anthropological perspectives on contemporary human problems. Nature and scope of the problems ; Crisis intensity ; Crisis awareness and response ; Anthropology's contribution ; The significance of tribal cultures ; The uniqueness of tribal cultures ; The dangerous spirit of Rousseau ; Romanticism: why not? ; The original affluent society ; Our tribal superiors ; The antiprimitivists -- Adaption, tribal culture, and the environmental crisis. Cultural evolution and adaption ; Nature and scope of the environmental crisis ; Environmental crisis and cultural change ; Global disequilibrium: "The limits to growth" ; Global 2000 ; "Roots of the environmental crisis" ; Ideological roots ; Herders, self-interest, and tragic commons ; Pleistocene extinctions ; Tribal cultures and the environment ; Fire and tribal resource management ; Tribal economics ; Nature in tribal ideology ; The Desana equilibrium model ; Tribal conservation in the Pacific.
Natural resources and the culture of consumption. Energy and culture: basic considerations ; The culture of consumption defined ; Resource consumption in America ; Taking stock ; The economics of resource depletion ; The consumption culture's environmental cost: Western coal ; Consumption culture versus tribal culture: Bougainville copper.
World hunger and the evolution of food systems. The Malthusian dilemma ; The evolution of food systems ; The domestic mode of food production ; Technological advances in food production ; State-level food systems ; Famine in the modern world ; Measuring hunger ; Needless hunger in Bangladesh -- Industrial food systems. Factory food production ; Factory potatoes versus swidden sweet potatoes ; Energy costs of the distribution system ; Potato chips and manoic cakes ; Fishing, trading, and "ghost acreage" ; The limits of food production.
The population problem. Population pressure, carrying capacity, and optimum population ; Population control among tribal hunters ; Population equilibrium in aboriginal Australia ; The Neolithic population explosion ; Population control among tribal village farmers ; The Tsembaga equilibrium model ; The Havasupai Indians ; Island population problems ; The state intervenes ; Policy implications.
Internal order. Violence in America ; Social order in egalitarian societies ; Social order in nonegalitarian societies ; Population density, stratification, and conflict ; The origin of states and inequality ; The disintegration of social order -- War and international order. The doomsday machine ; MAD: mutual assured destruction ; Postattack society: will the survivors envy the dead? ; The nuclear winter ; Cross-cultural perspectives on war ; War and human nature ; The causes of war ; Preventing war.
The future. The diagnosis: "terminal civilization" ; Impact assessment and regional planning ; Planning progress for the Pacific Northwest ; Views of the future ; The best of both worlds: a paraprimitive solution ; The small-nation alternative.
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