Some Social Concomitants of Industrialization and Urbanization

The transformation of society by industrialization and urbanization is currently of great concern to men of affairs and to men of science. Since the second World War the rate of industrialization has increased as people in previously isolated or tradition-bound societies have entered the main stream of world history to demand the material benefits of modern technology. They often seek those material benefits while hoping to retain their traditional cultures, yet, since England pointed the way in the eighteenth century, experience indicates that their hopes are utopian, for a radical change in the mode of production has profound repercussions on the rest of culture. This generalization is as sure as any in all of social science, but it is so abstract as to offer little guide to one who wants to know what the specific consequences of industrialization are likely to be. Some recent research helps us to do better.