Question

Discuss the salient features of the post industrial society

Answer 1

The post-industrial society is largely due to the shift in the kinds of work and the processing of information technology. There is much emphasis on information processing and therefore, sometimes the emerging post-industrial society is also called ‘information society’.

Regarding the nature of the emergence of this new society, there has been a debate among sociologists. Bell, Castells, Gordon, Gorz, Porat and Touraine have been the major contributors to this debate. These theorists have developed the construct of information society or the post-industrial society with their own perspective.

Both Bell and Porat argue that information occupations or technologies would in the long run result in the development of post-industrial society. Castells, however, vehemently differs from Bell and Touraine and says that information-based society is more post-industrial than the industrial society which was post-agrarian.

It is important to Castells that the information society is not simply confused with a service society in which the manufacturing sector has all disappeared from view. Like Bell and Touraine, he identifies the dynamics of the coming society in which there is role of knowledge and the use of knowledge and not the predominance of any one particular sector of an economy.

We may refer to any thinker who has shown his concern for the post-industrial society, and emphasizes the prime role of knowledge and information in the development of this kind of society.