Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY
Furthermore, these service products ‘form a fundamentally important source of
change in the overall industrial structure’ (Gershuny and Miles, 1983, p. 121). The
‘industrialisation of service production’ (p. 84) is a pointer to what others whom
we shall encounter in this book have called ‘consumer capitalism’, where the
production and consumption of goods and services are to be regarded as intimately
connected. And they underscore a recurrent criticism of Daniel Bell’s
theoretical and methodological presuppositions, that to conceive of society as
divisible into distinctly separate realms is profoundly misleading. The historical
record shows that ‘the economies of the Western world during the 1950s and the
1960s were dominated by the consequences of social and technological innovations
in the nature of provision for a particular range of service functions, namely
transport, domestic services, entertainment’ (p. 121). In other words, far from the
‘industrial’ sector of the post-war societies determining the amount of wealth (or
‘goods’) available to pay for more service workers, the major activity of industry
was the manufacture of service products, in response to clear demand from consumers,
that could substitute for service employees. Bell’s theorisation cannot begin to
account for this since an adequate explanation must jettison insistence on
separate realms of society from the outset.
Gershuny’s critique must mean that we reject Bell’s notion of post-industrial
society. And this rejection must be quite sweeping, dismissing everything from
Bell’s anti-holistic mantra (societies are not radically disjuncted, but rather intricately
connected) to his general account of social change as an evolution through
stages towards a ‘service economy’. His explanation for the emergence of PIS
is misconceived, his description of an emergent ‘caring’ society unconvincing,
and his insistence that it is possible to identify separate employment sectors
(which are yet causally connected, with services being dependent on the goodsproducing
level) is incorrect.
One is forced to take the view that more service sector employment, more
white-collar work, and even more professional occupations – all of which Bell
correctly highlights – do not announce a ‘post-industrial’ epoch. On the contrary,
these trends are each explicable as aspects of the continuity of an established,
and interdependent, socio-economic system. Furthermore, while these shifts and
changes do lead to increases in information and information activities, it is an
error to move from this to assert that a ‘post-industrial information society’ has
emerged.
I would add a coda to this final remark. It can be conceded readily enough
that there is a good deal more information work going on in contemporary societies
than heretofore. This, after all, is a starting point of this book. As we have
seen, Bell puts the growth of information employment down to increases in
person-to-person occupations founded in an expanding service sector. However,
it has not been a difficult task to demonstrate that, contra Bell, the real economy
is an integrated one, and that, rather than the service sector consuming resources
from the goods-producing sector, many service occupations have expanded
to aid its operation. This being so, it raises the question of the significance of
information and information work in the present circumstances.
52