Beyond Industrial Society?

Abstract

The main theme of this book is that industrialisation is a highly complex process which has moved through and continues to move through a number of discernible phases. Integral to this theme is the view that these phases can be adequately understood only in the perspective of an ever-changing world economy. Industrialisation refers not simply to the harnessing of new sources of power and new technologies to the production of goods and services. The diffusion of industrialism has had far-reaching consequences for the whole of social life. Industrialisation eventually created a ‘modern’ society, — that is, a society which went beyond providing basic necessities for the bulk of its citizens — to reach a stage where ever higher levels of consumption came to be seen as a reasonable and legitimate expectation.