Industrial Society

Industrial society refers to a society that has passed through an industrial revolution, with the large-scale organization of manufacturing and other sectors of the economy and high levels of division of labor and mechanization of processes having become commonplace. The products of manufacturing industry will be present in many spheres of consumption, from the infrastructures of energy and transport to manufactured appliances in the home and everyday life. Often, new consumer goods are “domesticated” versions of what were earlier industrial goods—sewing machines, telephones, computers, and so on.

The term industrial societies is part of everyday speech. It is commonly applied to countries of North America, to practically all European countries, to much of the former Soviet Union, to Japan (and often Korea), and to Australia and ...