Industrial society

An industrial society is organized chiefly around mechanized manufacturing, wage labor, and large-scale industry. Its production systems reshape settlement, social classes, institutions, and everyday life.

Industrialization: The transition toward an economy dominated by mechanized production and industrial activity. The historical process that creates the production systems defining industrial society.
Industrial Revolution: The transformation toward mechanized production that began in Britain in the eighteenth century and spread globally. Its early phase established the factory production and wage relations associated with industrial society.
James Watt: A Scottish engineer whose improvements to the steam engine increased its efficiency and usefulness. His engine became a major power source for industrial production and transport.
Working class: People whose livelihoods depend mainly on selling their labor for wages. Industrial expansion enlarged this class and made it central to economic and political life.
Agrarian society: A society in which agriculture is the principal basis of production, settlement, and social organization. It contrasts with industrial society’s dependence on mechanized manufacturing and urban employment.
Factory system: A production system that concentrates workers, machinery, and tasks in a centralized workplace. Factories coordinate labor and machinery at the scale characteristic of industrial production.
Enclosure: The consolidation of common and open fields into privately controlled agricultural land, especially in Britain. Enclosure altered rural livelihoods and helped supply labor to growing industrial centers.
Richard Arkwright: An English inventor and entrepreneur associated with water-powered cotton spinning and factory organization. His mills helped establish the factory as a model for organizing industrial labor.
Middle class: A social grouping commonly associated with nonmanual work, professional occupations, and moderate economic security. Industrial economies expanded commercial, managerial, and professional occupations associated with this group.
Post-industrial society: A society in which services and information work outweigh manufacturing in economic activity and employment. It describes a later shift away from industry as the dominant source of work and output.

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