Everything about Industrial Society totally explained
In
sociology,
industrial society refers to a society with a
modern societal structure. Such a structure developed in the west in the period of time following the
industrial revolution.
Pre-modern, or
Pre-industrial society are also called
agrarian societies. Industrial societies are generally
mass 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
petrolium 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're 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 organisation 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.
Bibliography
In New York City
- Grinin, L. 2007. Periodization of History: A theoretic-mathematical analysis. In: History & Mathematics
. Moscow: KomKniga/URSS. P.10-38. ISBN 9785484010011.
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