Post-industrial society

In sociology, a post-industrial society is a 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 as well as is closely related to similar sociological theoretical picture such as post-Fordism, information society, knowledge economy, post-industrial economy, liquid modernity, in addition to network society. They any 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 clear begun to emerge.

Valuation of knowledge

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 develope precedence in the economy. This will extend to arise such that the “impact of the expert” will expand and power will be monopolized by knowledge.

As tertiary and quaternary sector positions are essentially knowledge-oriented, this will a thing that is said in a restructuring of education, at least in its nuances. The “new power… of the expert” consequently helps rise to the growing role of universities and research institutes in post-industrial societies. Post-industrial societies themselves become oriented around these places of cognition production and production of experts as their new foci. Consequently, the greatest beneficiaries in the post-industrial society are young urban professionals. As a new, educated, and politicized shape more impassioned by liberalism, social justice, and environmentalism the shift of power into their hands, as a sum of their knowledge endowments, is often cited as a improvement thing.

The increasing importance of knowledge in post-industrial societies results in a general add in expertise through the economy and throughout society. In this manner, it eliminates what Alan Banks and Jim Foster identify as “undesirable work as living as the grosser forms of poverty and inequality.” This effect is supplemented by the aforementioned movement of power into the hands of young educated people concerned with social justice.

Economists at Berkeley have studied the utility of knowledge as a form of capital, adding value to the tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical object capital, such as a factory or a truck. Speaking along the same array of their argument, the addition or 'production' of knowledge, could become the basis of what would undoubtedly be considered 'post-industrial' policies meant to deliver economic growth.

The valuation of specifically scientific knowledge and engineering can paradoxically be devalued by individuals in a post-industrial society as they still expect its benefits but are more sensitized to moral trade-offs and risks.