Excerpt from Industrialization and Variation in Social Structure: An Empirical Test of the Convergence Hypothesis
In Industrialism and Industrial Man, Kerr, Dunlop, Harbison, and Myers concluded that social systems become more uniform and societies in general become more alike as they industrialize. While the convergence hypothesis has generated a good deal of discussion and controversy in the intervening fifteen years, reports of empirical tests of the concept have been limited. This paper summarizes such an attempt utilizing the techniques of cross-national research across a group of fifty-nine developing countries. The theoretical underpinnings of the hypothesis will first be discussed, the concept will then be restated in terms of testable hypotheses, the empirical findings will be reviewed, and, last, the conclusions will be presented.
Reduced to its essence, industrialization entails the use of inanimate sources of power - tools and machines - to multiply human effort in production. As its raison d'etre is an increase in output per unit of (human) input, broadscale industrialization results in an increased societal emphasis on efficiency which, given the nature of the machine, leads to larger scale productive units. There is thus a central logic to industrialization, a logic which leads to an increased emphasis on efficiency and scale.
As Moore has observed, it is not reasonable to expect industrialization to be neutral in its social consequences. Rather, evidence from both the West and the developing countries indicates that industrialization tends to be a "universal social solvent."
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