salient features of post industrial society
Answers
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.
The salient features of the Post-Industrial society are :
1. The economy transformed from the production of goods to the provision of services. It includes online services and home delivery as well.
2. Emergence of Knowledge elites and professional middle class.
3. Knowledge and technical skills become a valued form of capital.
4. Blue color jobs (manual) declined and IT and professional jobs increased.
5. Globalization is another feature of post-industrial society.
6. Outsourcing jobs like BPO, KPO is another feature of post-industrial society.
7. Inorganic relationships i.e relationships on the basis of interest and profit increased and organic i.e blood relationships declined.
8. Internet and use of social media like Facebook, Twitter etc.