In sociology, industrial
society refers to a society driven by the use of technology to enable mass
production, supporting a large population with a high capacity for division of
labour. Such a structure developed in the west in the period of time following
the Industrial Revolution, and replaced the agrarian societies of the
Pre-modern, Pre-industrial age. Industrial societies are generally mass
societies, and may be succeeded by an Information society. They are often
contrasted to with the traditional societies. Industrial society is
characterized by the use of external energy sources, such as fossil fuels, to
increase the rate and scale of production. The production of food is shifted to
large commercial farms where the products of industry, such as combine
harvesters and fossil fuel based fertilizers, are used to decrease required
human labor while increasing production. No longer needed for the production of
food, excess labor is moved into these factories where mechanization is
utilized to further increase efficiency. As populations grow, and mechanization
is further refined, often to the level of automation, many workers shift to
expanding service industries.
Industrial
society makes urbanization desirable, in part so that workers can be closer to
centers of production, and the service industry can provide labor to workers
and those that benefit financially from them, in exchange for a piece of
production profits with which they can buy goods. This leads to the rise of
very large cities and surrounding suburban areas with a high rate of economic activity.
These
urban centers require the input of external energy sources in order to overcome
the diminishing returns of agricultural consolidation, due partially to the
lack of nearby arable land, associated transportation and storage costs, and
are otherwise unsustainable. This makes the reliable availability of the needed
energy resources high priority in industrial government policies.
Some
theoreticians—namely Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens and Manuel Castells -- argue
that we are located in the middle of a transformation or transition from
industrial societies to post-modern societies. The triggering technology for
the change from an agricultural to an industrial organization was steam power,
allowing mass production and reducing the agricultural work necessary. Thus
many industrial cities are built around rivers. Identified as catalyst or
trigger for the transition to post-modern or informational society is global
information technology. If a nation becomes "post-industrial" it passes
through, or dodges, a phase of society predominated by a manufacturing-based
economy and moves on to a structure of society based on the provision of
information, innovation, finance, and services. A virtual cult of ‘creatives’
has sprung up embodying and often describing and defending the post-industrial
ethos. They argue that businesses that create intangibles have taken a more
prominent role in the wake of manufacturing's decline and that in some countries;
the production of creative intangibles produces more exports than manufacturing
alone. Actor and artistic director of the Old Vic Theatre, Kevin Spacey, has
argued the economic case for the arts in terms of providing jobs and being of
greater importance in exports than manufacturing (as well as an educational
role) in a guest column he wrote for The Times. As the term has been used, a
few common themes (not limited to those below) have begun to emerge. The
economy undergoes a transition from the production of goods to the provision of
services. Knowledge becomes a valued form of capital (e.g., the knowledge
produced through the Human Genome Project).
Producing
ideas is the main way to grow the economy. Through processes of globalization
and automation, the value and importance to the economy of blue-collar,
unionized work, including manual labor (e.g., assembly-line work) decline, and
those of professional workers (e.g. scientists, creative-industry
professionals, and IT professionals) grow in value and prevalence. Behavioral
and information sciences and technologies are developed and implemented. (e.g.
behavioral economics, information architecture, cybernetics, Game theory and
Information theory.
No comments:
Post a Comment