Technological Change. Chapter 3

Transcription

1 Chapter 3 Technological Change The societies of homo sapiens sapiens, the subspecies to which modern humans belong, began approximately 100,000 years ago. Over the succeeding millennia countless numbers of societies have appeared and disappeared. For most of them there is no recorded information, since they existed before the relatively late invention and spread of writing, about 5,000 years ago. Indirect archaeological evidence has shed some light on how a number of those in the preliterate era functioned, but for the majority there is no information. They simply developed and disappeared, leaving no clues about how they lived for future historians and social scientists. Any understanding of the different social ways in which people lived over the millennia of world history relies therefore of necessity as much on logic as it does on direct evidence. Whether on the bases of logical possibilities or direct evidence or combinations of both, most sociologists classify the varieties of societies that have existed in world history according to two criteria: their technological capacities, the subject of this chapter, and their socioeconomic structures, the subject of the following two chapters. The first yields a vocabulary of such terms as hunting and gathering, agricultural, and industrial societies; the second a vocabulary of such terms as slave, feudal, and capitalist societies. 24 ch03.indd 24 1/31/2014 2:29:09 PM

2 STAGES OF TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT Technological Change 25 Technology (from the Greek techne, or technique and logos, or knowledge ) means literally knowledge of techniques. In our context, technology means knowledge of techniques of production. The degree of sophistication of a society s techniques for producing food, shelter, clothing, and other survival necessities indicates its stage of technological development. There are three different ways in which social scientists classify societies according to their technological stages of development. In the first, they distinguish historical and prehistorical societies. Historical societies are those that have developed the communications technology of writing, while prehistorical societies were preliterate. Writing first developed in some regions about 5,000 years ago in Sumer, indicating that most of the 100,000 years of world history have been prehistorical according to this use of the term. For this work though we will use the term world history to cover both history and prehistory. Second, archaeologists base classifications of prehistorical societies on the materials from which tools and weapons were constructed. They use primary tool materials stone, bronze, and iron because those materials survived the ravages of time long enough to be found in the nineteenth and later centuries and thereby offer direct physical evidence that can be examined. During the Stone Age, which lasted up until 2500 B.C., people shaped their tools and weapons, as literally indicated by the name, out of available stones. As technology increased over thousands of years, copper (beginning in 4500 in Mesopotamia) and then bronze, a combination of copper and tin, replaced stone as the main tool- and weapon-making materials. The first production of iron began around 1200 B.C. Use of metals indicated a tremendous technological advance over use of stone because it resulted in tools that were far superior in strength and precision to those fashioned out of stone. The third approach, which is now conventionally used in sociological writings, classifies stages of development according to dominant types of production-oriented technologies. Sociologists and other social scientists now agree on a fairly standard vocabulary that classifies development into hunting and gathering, pastoral, horticultural, agricultural, industrial, and postindustrial types and stages (see Lenski and Lenski, 1982). ch03.indd 25 1/31/2014 2:29:09 PM

3 26 Chapter 3 Hunting and Gathering As the name hunting and gathering indicates, the earliest peoples survived by literally hunting animals and gathering ready-made nuts, vegetables, and fruit. It took tens of thousands of years for human societies to advance beyond hunting and gathering to more sophisticated production technologies. Hunting and gathering continues to be the major technology of only a few peoples in remote regions of the world today. Societies have also existed that resorted mainly to the related technology of fishing as their means of survival. Such societies continue today on many continents. Pastoral Herding, or pastoralism, and horticulture were the first technological advances beyond hunting, fishing, and gathering. Pastoralism is based on keeping and producing out of a herd of animals such as goats, cattle, and sheep. Pastoralism continues to be the main technological means of subsistence for peoples in several regions of the world. The best examples of recent or contemporary peoples who have subsisted on the bases of pastoral technologies are in East Africa, including the Borana, Maasai, Nandi, Turkana, and Jie peoples (Huntingford, 1953; Gulliver, 1955; Dahl, 1979). The Maasai are the best-known examples of pastoralists. They have had problems, though, maintaining their traditional way of life in the face of development pressures to use grazing lands more productively for food growing (Hunt, 1988). Horticultural Horticultural (from the Latin hortus, meaning garden, and cultura, meaning cultivation, thus literally garden cultivation ) technologies are based on people using hoes to cultivate small plots of land or gardens. The earliest evidence of horticulture being practiced is from about 9,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, Palestine, and Asia Minor (Lenski and Lenski, 1982, p. 137). Horticulture has continued to be the dominant technology of a number of peoples down to the present. Horticulture is often referred to as the lower stage of agrarian societies. ch03.indd 26 1/31/2014 2:29:09 PM

4 Technological Change 27 Box 3 1 Key Dates in Technological Development 10,000 B.C. Prehistory, Stone Age, hunting and gathering B.C. Domestication of plants and animals; beginnings of horticulture and pastoralism in Near East 7000 B.C. Farming villages between Tigris and Euphrates rivers 6500 B.C. Copper use (Anatolia), beginning of Bronze Age 3100 B.C. Pictograph writing (Sumer), beginning of history 2500 B.C. Bronze ox-drawn plow, beginning of agriculture 2000 B.C. Beginning of horticulture (the Americas) 1200 B.C. Beginning of the Iron Age 1750 Beginning of industrialization in Europe Agricultural The higher stage of agrarian societies is agriculture (from ager, meaning field, and cultura, meaning cultivation, thus literally field cultivation ). It is a more advanced technology than horticulture for cultivation of the soil. Instead of human energy driving hoes to cultivate small gardens, humans use animal energy (oxen, horses, cattle) to drive plows to cultivate fields. Mesopotamia and Egypt were the first sites of the agricultural revolution, about 4500 years ago. Agriculture marked a tremendous technological advance over horticulture because in it humans employed nonhuman sources of energy to drive their tools. The later incorporation of wind and river power to drive mills was related to technologies of using readily available natural energy sources. Industrial Industrialization, dating from about 1750, represents both an advance in technological sophistication and a shift of populations away from the land, that is, an urbanization of populations. In industrial production, humans use fossil fuels, electricity, steam, and now controlled nuclear fission as energy sources and machines as tools. At the same time, industrial production takes place in factories around which grow city populations of workers and others. While the factory was the primary location ch03.indd 27

5 28 Chapter 3 of industrial production, the invention of tractors and other motorized farm machinery has also brought about an industrialization of agriculture. (Hoe, plow, and tractor are the most useful symbols of the technological development of growing food.) Post-Industrial Many social scientists argue that today most of the developed countries of Europe and North America have advanced beyond a strictly industrial technological base to their economies. In general developmental stages, as agriculture becomes more productive, fewer laborers are needed on the land, freeing up labor to be employed in industrial production. A society can be considered to be at an industrial stage of development when it has more industrial than agricultural employees and when the two together constitute a majority of all employees. But these conditions no longer prevail for most of the European and North American labor forces where service employees in health, education, recreation, and other sectors now constitute the majorities. Labor-saving productivity gains in industry freed up labor to be employed in services, as previously productivity gains allowed labor to be shifted from agriculture to industry. For that reason a number of social scientists (see Chapter Five) now refer to most of Europe and North America as being at a post-industrial rather than industrial stage of development. World technological development has been significantly uneven. Some regions and societies passed out of the prehistoric past sooner than others. In modern times there are still societies that have yet to industrialize. It is thus impossible to date universally the technological classifications. The prehistoric stone and bronze ages last longer in some regions than others. While horticultural societies begin in 9000 B.C. between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, they do not begin until 2000 B.C. in the Americas. TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS There is no doubt that technological progress has been a central feature of grand historical development. But it is arguable whether that development has brought unmitigated human benefits. Many argue that there is ch03.indd 28

6 Technological Change 29 no evidence that people in technologically advanced societies lead any happier or more fulfilling lives than those in less advanced societies. The most that can be said is that technological advance has always brought with it the capacity for reducing misery. Development of technological means of producing more food has the potential to reduce malnutrition, starvation, sickness, and death. Increases in medical knowledge have a similar potential for reducing sources of misery. On the other hand, there are also increases in the technological means of producing misery, such as military means of destruction, which may have proceeded as fast as or faster than the means of reducing misery. With scant exceptions, societies in the world economy today exist somewhere between the poles of the agrarian and industrial or post- industrial stages of development. Developing societies are closer to the agrarian pole, while developed ones are closer to the industrial and postindustrial poles. All are experiencing and adapting in one way or another to social changes associated with degrees of industrial change over the last two hundred years. Industrialization affects the lives of people in different ways. Industrial technologies enable greater labor productivity; that in turn leads to increases in the availability of food, clothing, housing, and other material goods. There is a clear potential for industrialization to increase the material welfare of societies that benefits even the poorest members. Over the last half century, for example, average life spans have increased in the world, indicating that industrial change has had positive benefits for the species as a whole. Clearly though, those benefits have not been equally distributed, with the greatest share going to the world s higher-income countries and classes. Nevertheless, even the poorest have derived some benefits from industrial change. Despite continuing great hardships and health problems, compared to fifty years ago, their lives are materially easier and they are healthier albeit again with far less positive improvements than those of higher income countries. Technological development alters the distribution of labor forces and populations. Up until the industrial transformation, food production consumed most of the productive energies of societies, with most laborers toiling on the land. As farmers became more productive through employment of better tools and other techniques of production, they produced increasing surpluses of foods that could be sold to city dwellers. ch03.indd 29

7 30 Chapter 3 This was the vital condition that allowed urban factory economies to develop. In the industrial stage proper, the proportion of farm laborers in labor forces declined as their overall production of food increased, allowing food supplies to get to the now-increasing proportion of factory workers. In the most advanced societies, technological innovations in industrial production resulted in the proportion of factory workers in the labor force declining while their overall production of physical goods increased. This allowed relatively more laborers to be devoted to producing services such as education, health care, and administration the post-industrial condition. However, technologically induced shifts in labor force distributions rarely occurred without leaving considerable social problems in their wake. Industrialization spawned social uprooting, with individuals and families being squeezed off the land and driven into urban areas where they faced a host of new social problems. When industrialization occurs, more people come off of the land than can be immediately absorbed in factory jobs. Unemployment is the inevitable consequence, which then spawns other social problems, including poverty, crime, and family breakdown. The shift out of rural into urban locations itself produces social instability and stress. Uprooted peoples some forced to migrate internationally in search of jobs have difficulty adapting to new conditions. Families find that they are cut off from the social support networks provided by extended family members (aunts, uncles, grandparents) and traditional communities. In such conditions, parents find it difficult to maintain control over their children. Sociology textbooks in the United States during the 1940s, reflecting the experience of still fresh rural-to-urban migration, contained long discussion of the differences between rural and urban forms of social life. In American popular culture, country and western music plaintively and nostalgically continues to sing, literally, the virtues of rural life in the face of urban alienation. Across the developing world, cities are mushrooming as it becomes less possible to survive economically in the countryside. Most of the poor of those cities are recent arrivals from still poorer rural conditions. As in the experience of the United States and Europe earlier, they find that there are more of them than available jobs in factories. At the same time workch03.indd 30

8 Technological Change 31 ers in developed societies find that their jobs are vulnerable too, as corporations continually seek to use new technologies to save on labor costs. In addition, the unrelenting drive for technological innovation in industry and other areas produces pressure on the natural and social environments. Increasing demands for energy to power production threaten to deplete natural resources. Greater levels of production result in disposal problems, including disposal of radioactive and toxic materials. Expansion of industrial areas creates urban sprawl. Advances in biochemistry, including gene splicing, raise ethnical issues. The human drive to invent new technologies in part driven by competitive market forces and in part reflecting a human need to find creative solutions to existing problems while unquestioned in the past has come under question today. Should technological innovation proceed as quickly as possible regardless of ecological and social impacts? Should there be public regulation of the direction and rate of technological innovation as well as social programs to support those who suffer negative consequences, such as displaced workers? These are important questions since we are living through a period of exceptionally rapid technological change. Medieval peasants could rest assured that very little would change during their lifetime in how they did their work and lived. Today the opposite condition prevails: technological change is continually altering how jobs are done and where and how people live. Technology then, both in terms of its stage and direction of development, must be taken into consideration when analyzing societies of the past and present. However, technology does not develop abstractly in a vacuum. It develops in and is greatly influenced by social and economic contexts, the subject to which we now turn. Key Terms and Concepts (in order of presentation) Technology Agrarian Prehistory Horticulture Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages Agriculture Hunting and Gathering Industrialization Pastoralism Socioeconomic structure ch03.indd 31