Post-industrial society

In sociology, the post-industrial society is the stage of society's development when the service sector generates more wealth than the manufacturing sector of the economy.

The term was originated by Alain Touraine and is closely related to similar sociological theoretical constructs such as post-fordism, information society, knowledge economy, post-industrial economy, liquid modernity, and network society. They all can be used in economics or social science disciplines as a general theoretical backdrop in research design.

As the term has been used, a few common themes, including the ones below have begun to emerge.

Daniel Bell popularized the term through his 1974 work The Coming of Post-Industrial Society. Although some have credited Bell with coining the term, French sociologist Alain Touraine published in 1969 the first major work on the post-industrial society. The term was also used extensively by social philosopher Ivan Illich in his 1973 paper Tools for Conviviality. and appears occasionally in Leftist texts throughout the mid-to-late 1960s.

The term has grown and changed as it became mainstream. The term is now used by admen such as Seth Godin, public policy PhD's such as Keith Boeckelman, and sociologists such as Neil Fligstein and Ofer Sharone. President Bill Clinton even used the term to describe Chinese growth in a round-table discussion in Shanghai in 1998.

The post-industrialized society is marked by an increased valuation of knowledge. This itself is unsurprising, having been foreshadowed in Daniel Bell’s presumption as to how economic employment patterns will evolve in such societies. He asserts employment will grow faster in the tertiary (and quaternary) sector relative to employment in the primary and secondary sector and that the tertiary (and quaternary) sectors will take precedence in the economy. This will continue to occur such that the “impact of the expert” will expand and power will be monopolized by knowledge.

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