Stages of Societal Development

Mohamed Rabie ()

Chapter 2 in Global Economic and Cultural Transformation, 2013, pp 21-42 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract On their way to the knowledge age, human societies passed through a few stages; some historians and other social scientists have made the list lengthy, others have abbreviated it. However, each social scientist seems to acknowledge that the two greatest revolutions in human history were the agricultural and industrial revolutions, which gave birth to the agricultural and industrial civilizations. Historians also acknowledge that these two revolutions have had the greatest impact on people’s cultures and economic conditions, or on their general ways of living and states of living. There is also an agreement on at least three major stages of societal development: the hunter-gatherer, the agricultural, and the industrial stage. Nevertheless, a growing number of social scientists think that the information and communications revolutions represent another revolution in human history that is destined to transform both the cultures and economic conditions of peoples of the world. This new stage is often referred to as the post-industrial age, the information age, or the globalization age. I call it the knowledge age, because knowledge and the recent technological innovations and scientific developments it includes are the major forces changing people’s cultures, worldviews, relationships, and economic conditions everywhere.

Keywords: Industrial Revolution; Industrial Society; Transitional Period; Agricultural Community; Societal Development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-36533-0_2

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9781137365330

DOI: 10.1057/9781137365330_2

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().