SOCIETAL STAGES

Societal Stages

Societal Stages, Industry

The Stages of Societal Change:

To realise why matters of diversity and multiculturalism are actually demanding the bases of our humanity and the objective of learning needs the perception that humanity is not a static entity, but an ever-changing one. We today reside in a humanity distinct from that of generations past. A malfunction to realise this may outcome in procedures of learning that are no longer applicable to today's desires, much less tomorrows. It is significant thus to understand how humanity has undergone change, in alignment to glimpse where we are today in evaluation with generations past and the distinct trials both schools and humanity face today and will face tomorrow. The 21st 100 years is quickly close to (Max, 1989).

 

Society

An agrarian society dominated much of human history until the nineteenth century, when the economic base shifted from agriculture to industry, first in Europe in the eighteenth century then in the United States in the nineteenth, as a result of the Industrial Revolution. The primary result of this shift was that for the first time society, as we know it, came into existence. Prior to this time, because of the economic base, the villages and communities were isolated enough and sufficiently independent of each other to prevent a collective way of life from developing with a sense of unity. This does not mean that society did not exist before, but that previous philosophers and thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and William Shakespeare, tended to focus on the ideal society and what society ought to be like. None of them focused on society as a social-existential reality—as it was. Neither did they attempt to analyze the existing human, social condition. It was this concern to understand the present reality of human society and the many changes taking place that gave rise to the discipline of sociology (Timothy et al., 1991).

     With industrialization hordes of people were brought together from different walks of life and of different ethnic origins, and were forced to interact with each other, and form some collective sense of existence. The result was the birth of society as we know it today. The industrial society held sway until 1956 and 1957, when the information society had its beginnings. Two factors brought about the change — the rise of a professional class and the computer chip. We have now shifted from a labor intensive economy to a knowledge intensive one, dominated by the computer and the communications satellite. Some people believe we are now entering the information society. In all actuality we have been in it for some time, and are soon to leave it (Benjamin, 1992).

 

Economy

Puritan values dominated society. “Anything that wasn't work was sinful. Even sexual intercourse was supposed to be work, with a progeny as the product.”12 The industrial society came into being after the Civil War when the economic base shifted to manufacturing; the rotating of raw materials into commodities and consumer ...