|
Post-Industrial Thesis is the theory that modern economies in the Western world
have moved from a focus on goods production (an industrial base) to a new foundation of
knowledge and sophisticated services.
This new economy is assumed to demand different
kinds of workers, to allow for more job satisfaction and to foster less labour conflict.
The rationale for the post-industrial thesis was announced in
Bell’s 'The End of Ideology', the text in which he first announced the exhaustion of
utopian political ideologies: The end of ideology is not - should not be - the end of
utopia as well. ... There is now, more than ever, some need for utopia, in the sense that
men need - as they always have needed - some vision of their potential, some manner of
fusing passion with intelligence. Yet the ladder to the City of Heaven can no longer be a
“faith ladder”, but an empirical one: a utopia has to specify where one wants to
go, how to get there, the costs of the enterprise, and some realization of and
justification for the determination of who is to pay. (Bell, 1962, 405)
'Post-Industrial Society' and the Psychology of the American Far Right, 1950-74
Kendrick Oliver
Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Oct., 1999), pp. 601-618
Managing Professionals: Ideological Proletarianization and Post-Industrial Labor
Charles Derber
Theory and Society, Vol. 12, No. 3 (May, 1983), pp. 309-341
THE EMERGENCE OF AN INFORMATION SOCIETY CONCEPT
oscail.ie/students/moduletext2006/IT_1stassign/HSB%20Unit%206.pdf
AIM: The aim of this unit is to outline the concept of the information society as set out
by Daniel Bell and to introduce Manuel Castells concept of the Network Society.
OBJECTIVES
By the end of this unit you should be able to:
Differentiate between the terms ‘post-industrial society’ and ‘the
information society’.
Compare Bell’s concept of post-industrial society as outlined in the previous unit
with his more recent analysis of the policy issues which emerge from the growth of IT;
outline the six issues he considers central to the question.
Summarise Castell’s vision of the information society - Network Society
INTRODUCTION
In the previous unit I outlined the concept of the post-industrial society as developed by
Daniel Bell and indicated the grounds upon which this theory has been criticised by other
sociologists. In this unit I introduce the concept of ‘the information society’
and indicate how this concept was influenced by the growth of IT. I will again be drawing
from the work of Daniel Bell; you’ll see how his views have progressed from his early
utopian viewpoint to a more circumspect approach. As a contrast to Daniel Bell’s
outline of the problems which will face an information society, we will introduce the
views of Castell’s on Information society; the Network society
‘POST-INDUSTRIAL’ SOCIETY AND ‘THE INFORMATION SOCIETY’
Even before public awareness of the potential of microelectronic technology had developed,
it was being argued, as we saw in Unit 5, that the historical era inaugurated by the
industrial revolution was over.
Changes taking place in the occupational structures of the advanced societies were so
fundamental, it was said, that these societies should now be regarded as being
‘post-industrial’ in nature. This post-industrial thesis was contested by its
critics, however. They concluded that close scrutiny of the type of evidence put forward
in support of the thesis revealed deficiencies. They argued from this that the various
contentions of the thesis were a long way short of being convincingly proven.
On this side of the Atlantic, at least, Krishan Kumar has been the most prominent of these
critics. But his book is now ten years old and these ten years have witnessed the
increasingly rapid diffusion of IT and the growth of IT awareness. There is a growing
feeling among sociologists -exemplified by the debate between Robin Fincham and David Lyon
in the August 1987 issue of the journal Sociology - that their literature needs to be
updated to take proper account of IT.
Thus, IT has indeed contributed a new element to the debate. Certainly, the use of IT has
increased the prevalence of the belief that a major social transformation is under way, or
that we stand on the brink of such a transformation. The post-industrial world, has, for
many of its supporters, been made flesh in the shape of IT. In particular IT has given a
definite and positive social content to a concept which was originally defined in negative
terms.
Let’s consider the terms used in the debate: when we look at the terms
‘post-industrial society ‘ and ‘information society’ the change of
emphasis is clear.
When it is applied to society, the term ‘post-industrial’ tells us what it used
to be, but no longer is. It tells us, in other words, that we are living in something
which is not an industrial society. But this is not a very strong statement about the
character of the present: all it says is that the present is unlike the immediate past in
a number of ways and that the differences between the state of things now and the state of
things then ought to be regarded as being of fundamental importance. The term
‘information society’, on the other hand, gives change a definite character. It
tells us that while the manufacture of things was at the centre of the old industrial
order, the processing of information will be a crucial feature of its successor.
From Pierre Veltz article - Business Services in the Global
Service Economy - veltz.fr
It is a commonplace to distinguish different stages in the pathway of a national
economy: after the agricultural stage comes the industrial stage, and then the so-called
post-industrial stage, characterized by the predominance of information (rather than
material) processing sectors, knowledge (rather than cost) based competition and a
dramatic shift in the occupational structure. So, the US and the European economies are
supposed to be post-industrial: 85 % of jobs in the US belong to the service sectors
(either personal or business services), 75 % in France.
The post-industrial thesis has different roots and relies on a vast literature. D. Bell,
an American sociologist, has coined the term in 1973, emphasizing not only the changes in
the occupational system in advanced economies (and mainly in the US) but the fact that
knowledge and science based technology replaces progressively the physical energy of human
labor (and traditional machinery) as the real basis of growth and as the core process of
social development. Sauvy, a French demographer, explained how the increase of
productivity generated by the growing automation in the manufacturing sectors results,
through a complex process he called “productivity overspill”, in the creation of
new jobs in the sectors of services where automation is impossible. Many economists, like
Baumol in the US, have emphasized this distinction between two sectors: a sector
characterized by high productivity (broadly speaking: manufacturing) and a sector where
the productivity is by nature stagnant. Finally, the rather universal division existing in
the statistical taxonomy between manufacturing and services gives this division the status
of a quasi-natural dichotomy. So, why should we prefer the idea of a
“hyper-industrial” society to the idea of a “post-industrial” one? For
several reasons:
The economy as a whole is shifting to a “service economy”
The descriptive and organizational approach showing the close and intertwined links
between different sectors catches only one aspect of the economic reality. The most
important point is to go beyond the dichotomy between goods and services, putting apart
traditional distinctions that seem relevant only in a very superficial view, and to
understand the deep convergence between manufacturing and services at the level of the
process of wealth-creation itself, considered as a whole. This convergence is generally
summarized under the terms of “service economy” (see for instance Giarini,
1987). And this thesis is of course compatible with the idea of “hyper-industry”
(so we should characterize the present economy as a “hyper-industrial service
economy”).
The post-industrial thesis would particularly highlight the
following causes, all of which it regards as being closely linked to one another within
the context of post-industrial change:
the emergence of a post-industrial society
the decline of working-class mobilisation networks
the decline of traditional middle-class mobilisation
networks and the growth of leisure-based advocacy and single issue campaign networks
the lack of influence citizens have over political decisions
the out-dated methods of democratic participation
the rise of a socially excluded group in society.
Bell, D. (1962) The End of Ideology: on the exhaustion of
political ideas in the fifties. N.Y.: Free Press.
Bell, D. (1967) ‘Notes on the Post-Industrial Society (Pt 1)’. The Public
Interest 6: 24-35.
Bell,D. (1989) ‘Communication Technology: for Better or for Worse?’. In The
Information Society: economic, social, and structural issues. Ed J.Salvaggio, Hillsdale,
N.J.: LEA.
Bell,D. (1999a) The Coming of Post-Industrial Society. N.Y. Basic Books. First published
1973.
Bell,D. (1999b) ‘The Axial Age of Technology: foreword 1999’. In Bell (1999a). |
|