Industrialization as an Agent of Social Change

A Critical Analysis

Herbert Blumer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351328746
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Herbert Blumer wrote continuously and voluminously, and consequently left a vast array of unpublished work at the time of his death in 1987. This posthumously published volume testifies further to his perceptive analysis of large-scale social organizations and elegant application of symbolic interactionist principles.

Blumer's focus on the processual nature of social life and on the significance of the communicative interpretation of social contexts is manifest in his theory of industrialization and social change. His theory entails three major points: industrialization must be seen in processual terms, and the industrialization process is different for different historical periods; the consequences of industrialization are a function of the interpretive nature of human action and resembles a neutral framework within which groups interpret the meaning of industrial relations, and the industrial sector must be viewed in terms of power relations; industrial societies contain inherently conflicting interests.

The editors' introductory essay outlines Blumer's metatheoretical stance (symbolic interactionism) and its emphasis on the adjustive character of social life. It places Blumer's theory in the context of contemporary macro theory, including world systems theory, resource dependence theory, and modernization theory.

IV

Industrialization as an Agent of Social Change—Preliminary Considerations

In the previous chapter I have sought to identify the makeup of industrialization as an agent of social change. That identification was guided by the principle that the industrializing process must be seen and caught in terms of its points of contact with group life. Any depiction of industrialization as an agent of social change that merely aligns it alongside group life without showing its lines of entry into group life must be recognized as inadequate and highly suspect. We need a depiction that will allow us to see industrialization at work, instead of a depiction that merely leads the student to jump to alleged end effects. Guided by this need, I specified nine major lines along which the industrializing process seems, clearly, to play into group life, setting the need or occasion for social change. The question now arises as to how the industrializing process operates and functions along these lines of its entry into group life. The present chapter is addressed to this question, although unavoidably only in a preliminary way. The full consideration of the role of industrialization as an agent of social change can be given only through a series of stages that permit an orderly addition of new sets of observations for which analysis calls. The themes that runs through and dominates the chapter are (a) that there is a wide range of alternative developments along each line of entry of the industrializing process into group life, and (b) that the industrializing process does not determine the given alternative development that comes into being. In this sense industrialization is indeterminate or neutral with regard to what happens socially in its wake. This theme is so markedly in opposition to the premise of scholarly thought in this area that it needs to be developed very carefully.

To avoid all possibility of misinterpretation it should be understood very clearly that the industrializing process is an agent of social change. To speak of it as being neutral or indeterminate does not mean that it is inconsequential or lifeless. To the contrary, its introduction leads always to some degree and some form of social change. Usually, the influence of industrialization is very extensive and profound. In introducing or expanding a new kind of economy it sets a different kind of framework inside of which collective life has to fit. In fitting into this new framework, people may be wrenched loose from a previous structure, subjected to the play of disorganizing forces of great power in the period of transition, and led to reorganize life and institutions along radically different lines. Mere causal reflection on the nine lines of entry into group life should make it vividly clear that the industrializing process necessarily introduces and induces social changes—changes that may assume great magnitude. In introducing a new occupational structure, in inaugurating ways of manning it, in launching migratory movements and a new ecological arrangement of people, in leading to systems of organizing and controlling people in their manifold industrial relationships, in bringing new groups into existence, in forming new collective interests around which the lives and pursuits of people become organized, in favoring valuations of life along monetary and contractual lines, in introducing new goods and products that may undermine existing industry and result in new patterns of consumption, and in providing for new patterns of income—in these ways, the industrializing process forces change in the lives and relations of people. Further, the changes that are started at each of the nine initial points of contact are almost certain to induce changes in other and most distant areas of group life; the initial changes may set off ramified chains of transformation that extend into all parts of group life. Thus, such diverse parts of group life as religion, education, moral codes, political organization, home life, village life, law, literature, and philosophy may reflect the impact of industrialization. Anyone with an eye to changes taking place in our contemporary world or familiar with those which have occurred historically to peoples and lands subject to industrialization must recognize the industrializing process for what it is, namely, a most powerful agent of social change.

Indeed, it is precisely this recognition which has led scholars into a serious methodological trap. In seeing industrialization as a formidable agency of social change, in perceiving the impressive changes that follow in its wake, they are led to view industrialization as responsible for the given social changes to which it has seemingly given rise. Nothing would seem more proper than to reason this way. If, for example, one notes that with the introduction of a set of factories, the life of a community or region begins to change significantly, one is naturally led to attribute the changes to this form of industrialization. If men flock to the factories for employment, give up agricultural and handicraft pursuits in which they have been engaged, abandon farms and villages for living quarters near factories, learn new skills, fit into a new regimen of work, secure accustomed cash income, and buy new forms of merchandise, it would seem obvious to ascribe these to the factory system. And if, further, the workers find their work to be strange and harsh, become restless and discontented, and engage in protest behavior, if their wives develop new ideas of privileges and enjoyments, if their children in their crowded living areas throw off customary discipline and control, if the industrial owners emerge as a new powerful group able to gain preferential legislation, if new municipal institutions like schools and welfare agencies arise, and if the institutions of the old villages grow weak, why should not these happenings be attributed to the industrialization that seems clearly to have brought them about?

It is not surprising that with such observations scholars have been led to view industrialization as responsible for the changes that follow its occurrence. This view has become an axiomatic premise and a working principle. Thus, as noted in earlier chapters, industrialization is given the properties of a causal agent, which brings about given kinds of social consequences. Without question this simple schema has dominated past thought. Similarly, it guides current thinking. From Karl Marx to contemporary students, the line of analysis has been to pin specific social effects on industrialization. Thus, Marx sought to show that capitalism (as an industrial economy) gave rise to a specific kind of class structure. Present-day students, while concerned with a wider variety of matters, are guided by the same logical idea that industrialization gives rise to specific kinds of social consequences. Whether the interest be that of studying social strata in an industrialized country, or that of studying labor discontent under early industrialization, or that of explaining the emergence of a new standard of material living in an industrialized region, or that of accounting for the formation of urban conglomerations, industrialization is viewed as a kind of causative agent that produces the specific social matters that are the objects of study. A review of the current literature shows forcibly that both explanation and research rest on the premise that industrialization produces specific social effects.

There are two major approaches or forms of thinking stemming from this premise that need to be spelled out in order to understand current scholarly thinking. The first of these is that the process of industrialization is responsible, by itself, for the specific social happenings that follow upon it. The industrializing process is regarded as a kind of coercive agent, which forges the form that is taken by the happenings. It forces various areas of group life to fit, so to speak, inside a series of molds that are set by the intrinsic nature of the process. Thus, industrialization coerces urbanization, it forces an elimination of handicraft industry, it compels the formation of a laboring class with given characteristics, it necessitates the physical and social mobility of people, and it forces a recognition of individual status in terms of achievement instead of family affiliation. Industrialization is viewed as a self-contained factor, responsible for the social changes that occur with, or after, its introduction. Hence, in study, in research, or in explanation, industrialization is treated as a unitary influence, sufficient in itself, to handle the tasks of scholarly concern. Basically, one need not add to it other factors to account for the social happenings; insofar as consideration is given to other factors, they are regarded as either accidental or irrational factors, which interfere temporarily with the unfolding of what is logically compelled by industrialization, or as lesser factors, which bring about minor individual variations in basic patterns.

Under this approach or form of thought, little if any attention is given to the character of the social setting in which industrialization occurs. The social setting is merely the stage on which the industrial drama takes place. The task is to watch this drama—preeminently to catch the social consequences that are the most significant part of it. Hence, the social setting shifts to the periphery of attention or is ignored completely. The scholar shunts aside the social setting either by constructing or working with an “ideal type” of industrialization or by engaging in a comparative study of instances of industrialization in an effort to disengage industrialization in its universal character. The outcomes of both instances are logically the same. We are given a view of industrialization as a process that, by itself, brings into being naturally and inevitably given social happenings. The task of scholarship under this view is to identify these social happenings which are tied to industrialization as its effects.

The second of the two major ways of treating industrialization as a causative agent of social change is to introduce alongside it other factors, usually the social setting in which it occurs. The combination of industrialization and its social setting may be used either to search for general laws or to explain the unique character of a particular instance. In the one case, industrialization is regarded as an independent variable, which when introduced into a given kind of social setting will have certain kinds of results; these results are the dependent variables. The task of scholarship becomes that of reducing social settings to a series of classes so that one can say that in the case of a specified class of social settings the introduction of industrialization will lead to a set of specified social consequences. In the other case, the social setting in which industrialization operates is viewed in terms of its individual makeup instead of a common class makeup. This approach, which is likely to be made chiefly by anthropologists and historians, aims to find out not what the industrializing process does generally, but what it does specifically in the given concrete instance. The special nature of the particular social setting is recognized to be of pronounced importance in setting the lines along which the influence of the industrializing process moves in shaping the social outcome of that influence.

Whether the social setting be depicted in general and abstract terms or in particular and concrete terms, it is added to the industrializing process to account for the specific effects of industrialization. It should be noted that this addition does not detract from the causal status of industrialization. Industrialization continues to be regarded as an agent bringing about specific social consequences—only now it cannot be regarded as bringing these about by itself. It shares causal agency with the social setting.

The two views of industrialization that I have been discussing—that which treats it as a cause by itself and that which adds to it the influence of the social setting—are not as clearly separated and defined in scholarly thought as my remarks suggest. The typical picture in the literature is that of the scholar treating industrialization at one point as though it, by itself, gave rise to designated social results, and at other points acknowledging that the social setting in either its general or individual character enters to help account for such results. In this area scholarly thinking has the habit of jumping around without much consistency.

What is consistent in scholarly thought is the premise that industrialization operates as a causative force, whether by itself or with other factors, to bring about specific social results. The search by scholars either in research or explanation is to tie to the industrializing process specifiable social happenings, irrespective of whether these happenings be very general, as in a declared undermining of traditional authority, or very particular as in the weakening of the authority of the elders in a designated village. In all such instances, industrialization is treated either explicitly or implicitly as determining the designated outcome. Scholars seek knowledge that may be presented in the form of assertions that industrialization brings about such and such social conditions or social happenings. It does not really matter whether the social happenings are labeled “results,” “consequences,” “implications,” “dependent variables,” “correlations,” or “accompaniments.” They are thought of as being brought about by the industrializing process and consequently as being linked to that process. The aim of scholarship becomes that of identifying what is so linked to the process.

My purpose in this chapter is to examine the premise or schema that the industrializing process produces designative social effects, whether they be general and complex in nature, or particular and simple. I believe that a careful evaluation of the evidence forces one to the conclusion that industrialization is essentially neutral and indifferent to the character of the social happenings that follow in its wake. While industrialization clearly lays the groundwork for extensive social change, it does not determine or explain the particular social changes that take place. This proposition can be understood initially, and I believe most clearly, by an examination of what happens along the lines of entry of the industrializing process into group life. This examination will disclose that a variety of alternative possibilities of social development exists along each line and that the industrializing process per se does not determine the particular alternative that may come into being. I shall consider each of the nine lines of entry specified in the previous chapter. In order not to be too tiresome in repeating the same kind of observations, my discussion of some of the nine lines may be quite brief. As is true of the whole monograph, the discussion will be concerned chiefly with early industrialization, that is to say, with the introduction of the industrializing process rather than with its expansion in an industrially mature country.

A. Analysis of Happenings at Points of Entry

It may be helpful if the reader is sensitized to the scheme of analysis to be employed in the discussion of the separate lines of entry. I shall refer, first, to the bare framework of what is introduced at the point of entry. It should be noted that this bare framework will vary with the type of industrialization. It will also vary because of differences in policy determinations by those who introduce it. Thus, the framework of what is introduced is in no sense uniform or constant. Second, and of chief importance, I shall consider the social response that is made to the framework of what is introduced. My interest is to show that the bare framework does not determine this response and that, indeed, it is indifferent to its character.

1. The Structure of Positions and Occupations

As has been explained in the previous chapter, industrialization as a distinctive type of economy brings in a new structure of positions, occupations, and jobs. This structure lays a basis for a new social arrangement of people. The differences between the positions and occupations in terms of income, authority, privilege, and prestige will be reflected in the social stratification of the society. The codes of living that grow up around the positions and occupations become an important part of group life. Thus, the introduction of a new structure of occupations and positions appears as a very powerful way in which industrialization changes group life. Faced by the new social structure that grows up around the array of positions and occupations introduced by industrialization, the natural disposition of scholars is to ascribe this social structure to the industrializing process. Yet, when one analyzes carefully what takes place, he becomes aware that such an ascription while facile is grossly inadequate.

The first matter to be noted in the analysis is the substantial range of differences in the makeup of the occupational structures that may be introduced in different instances of industrialization. In no sense is the structure uniform. Part of the differences come from the variation in the kind of industrial enterprises that are introduced. Some of the enterprises, like a simple textile industry, may call for low-level skills; others, like an oil refinery or a pharmaceutical industry, may call for high-level skills. Some may require a proportionately large managerial force, while others may need a small managerial staff in relation to a large force of workers. Some may need a widely differentiated range of jobs, while others may call for a small number of occupations that are essentially alike. The fact that the kinds of industrial pursuit will require significantly different structures of occupations should be self-evident and require no elaboration. However, there is another important source of difference in the character of the structure of occupations and positions, namely, various policy determinations that shape positions and occupations and the relations between them. Without considering the conditions that may set policy determinations, it is sufficient to point out that policy determinations may exercise considerable influence in shaping the structure of positions and occupations. First, the character of ownership may vary considerably—it may be ownership by the state, ownership by joint stock companies, ownership by mixed governmental and private organizations, ownership by families, ownership by private entrepreneurs, local ownership, distant ownership and “absentee” ownership. Accordingly, the position of owner may vary considerably without the variation being due to the character of the industry. Similarly, considerable variation may exist in managerial structures, quite independent of the kinds of industrial pursuits. Policies may favor a large managerial force or a small managerial force, a complex and elaborated scheme of managerial positions or a simple and “streamlined” scheme, a hierarchy of managerial posts with wide differences in authority between them or an arrangement of posts with slight differences in authority between them. Similar variations are to be found in the structures of wage occupations. They will obviously differ with the type of industry. Further, policies may introduce significant differences in the structures of the working occupations. Policies may favor wide or narrow differentiations in wage scales between the occupations, a series of neat, watertight jurisdictions or an arrangement allowing for a free performance of different lines of work by the same employee, the allocation of work to an excessive or inflated number of workers who are poorly paid or the limitation of jobs to a small number of workers.

Enough has been said to indicate that the bare framework of occupations and positions introduced by industrialization is in no sense uniform or constant. Differences in income, authority, and skill may be great or small between owners and top managers, between different levels of management, between management and workers, and between different categories of workers. Part of such differences arise from the intrinsic makeup of different kinds of industry, but to a great extent such differences may arise from factors, such as policy determination, that do not flow from the intrinsic makeup of the industry. The industrializing process is committed, one may say, to the production of a given kind of goods; in itself, it is indifferent to the patterns of income differential, to the structuring of authority, to the number and organization of positions, and to degrees of moderate manning or overmanning that develop in such production. In this sense, alternative structures of positions and occupations may exist for the same type of industrial pursuit. The given industrial pursuit, in itself, does not account for the particular pattern of positions and occupations that comes into existence. I am not unmindful of the contention that the state of competition and the state of the labor market operate to stabilize income in the form of profits, salaries, and wages, to rationalize the managerial and occupational structure into a similar mold, and to restrict the managerial and occupational posts to those which are essential. Yet, it would be very shortsighted to ignore the play of such factors as administrative policy, governmental regulation, traditional practice, community ideologies, and the strength of pressure groups in shaping the structure of positions and occupations that come into existence.

My remarks so far are confined to the bare structure of positions and occupations that are introduced by the industrializing process. This is the smaller item of importance in the entry of this structure into group life. Far more crucial are the ways in which the positions and occupations come to be socially defined and regarded and the patterns and codes of living that grow up around them. The prestige, privilege, authority, and power that are attached to the positions and occupations by the wider community may differ markedly from instance to instance of industrialization. Industrial owners may be viewed with distaste, find institutional leaders arraigned against them, be shut out by t...