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 New Zealand. Those cases where the label has been applied for many decades are often viewed as advanced industrial societies and contrasted with newly industrializing countries (NICs) and emerging economies (especially China and India). (Deindustrialisation is used to refer to severe loss of manufacturing to NICs and emerging economies.) Finally, other developing countries or underdeveloped economies may be seen as awaiting their own industrial transformations.

These categories are prevalent; however, the term industrial society has been, and remains, contentious. At its most basic, contemporary use of the term refers to societies with a strong manufacturing sector, integrated into the wider economy (i.e., not mainly focused on overseas exports). Such societies feature a shift in the workforce away from agriculture, where mechanization and agribusinesses' pursuit of economies of scale act as “push factors” and the greater attractions of city life as a “pull factor.” They also feature a decline in the role of craft production of goods and a greater divorce between home and workplace. The market provides many basic goods and services that were previously self-produced, though domestic work still remained highly important for meal preparation, personal care, and so on. Early industrialization is typically connected with large-scale urbanization, as many workers move to be close to factory and related workplaces. This means the emergence of modes of consumption based on urban living and the dwellings, goods, and services that go along with this. The bulk of the population becomes urbanized, with employment shifting to manufacturing and service industries.

The archetypal industrial revolutions in Europe and the United States stretched over many decades, as new factory systems and technologies were introduced, accompanied by massive changes in occupational structures and workplace organization and experience. Many commentators describe two industrial revolutions—the first beginning in Great Britain in the late-eighteenth century and involving the use of water power and steam engines, the organization of work in factories, the growth of machine-based manufacturing (e.g., in textile industries), the construction and use of canals and improvement of roads, et cetera. New techniques in metallurgy were used to make machinery that could be employed in many industries. From the mid-nineteenth century, the Second Industrial Revolution involved the wider application of coal and steam power, including in transport—railways and steam-powered ships—and improved communications through telegraphy. In the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the internal combustion engine and electrical machinery made much more mobility and flexibility possible, so much so that some commentators refer to a Third Industrial Revolution. (New information technology is similarly seen as the core technology in a further revolution.) The leadership of the first revolutions may have been with Great Britain, but the approaches and techniques diffused widely round the [Page 769]world, with the United States being at the forefront of many twentieth-century developments.

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