Pre-industrial society

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Pre-industrial society refers to specific social attributes and forms of political and cultural organization that were prevalent before the advent of the Industrial Revolution.

A park interpreter demonstrates a typical rural kitchen of 1918 (Sauer-Beckmann Farmstead, a living history farm at the Lyndon B. Johnson State Park and Historic Site, Texas, United States). The woman's role seems pre-industrial, but the technology is already industrial.

[edit] Some attributes of the pre-industrial societies

• Limited production (i.e. artisanship vs. mass production)
• Primarily an agricultural economy
• Limited division of labor. In pre-industrial societies, production was relatively simple and the number of specialized crafts was limited.
• Limited variation of social classes
• Parochialism—Social theories hold that communications were limited between human communities in pre-industrial societies. Few had the opportunity to see or hear beyond their own village. In contrast, industrial societies grew with the help of faster means of communication, having more information at hand about the world, allowing knowledge transfer and cultural diffusion between them.
• Pre-industrial societies developed largely in rural communities. Capitalism developed largely in urban areas.

[edit] See also

• British Agricultural Revolution
• Industrialisation
• Modernization theory
• Family economy

[edit] Bibliography

• Grinin, L. 2007. Periodization of History: A theoretic-mathematical analysis. In: History & Mathematics. Ed. by Leonid Grinin, Victor de Munck, and Andrey Korotayev. Moscow: KomKniga/URSS. P.10-38. ISBN 9785484010011.