Jared Diamond
American biogeographer and physiologist at UCLA. Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997, Pulitzer Prize) is the canonical popular-science case for biogeographic determinism of civilizational outcomes: continental axis orientation, availability of domesticable flora and fauna, and disease environment set the initial conditions within which all subsequent human history played out. Reaches from 10,000 BCE to the present. Hugely influential outside academic economic history but widely regarded within the discipline as too coarse for specific Great-Divergence questions and too willing to assume that proximate institutional and political differences reduce to deep geographic ones.
Associated positions
Section titled “Associated positions”- Geography & disease environment — primary popular expositor of biogeographic determinism.
- Indirectly relevant to state competition & fragmentation (Diamond argues European fragmentation is geographically caused).
Key works
Section titled “Key works”- Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (1997).
- Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005).
- The World Until Yesterday (2012).