UNIT 1: INDUSTRIALIZATION AND CAPITALISM

Overview

We launch our sociological analysis of work by looking back into the past. The study of work is concerned with the industrial context in which work is performed. We thus need to closely examine the transformation of industrial structures over time. What Unit 1 does, then, is sketch the broad contours of the capitalist industrialization process. It was this set of economic changes that had -- and continues to have, as we shall see in Unit 2 -- a huge impact on the work performed by women and men. We trace how the industrial revolution took root first in Europe. We then contrast this European pattern of industrialization to that found in colonial Canada. The Unit also introduces the main features of 20th century corporate capitalism, which created many of the labour market structures, organizational forms and management approaches still found today. The Unit emphasizes the implications of successive changes in industry for the form, content and social relations of work.

Unit Objectives

By the end of Unit 1, you should be able to:

  1. Outline the key ingredients of the capitalist industrialization process.
  2. Identify major differences in this process as it occurred in Europe and in Canada.
  3. Discuss the nature of work in pre-capitalist and early capitalist societies.
  4. Assess the impact of industrial development on employment relations, labour markets and skills.
  5. Account for how and why the development of capitalist industry was experienced differently depending on a person's gender, race or ethnicity.
  6. Analyze how the rise of corporate capitalism brought in its wake new forms of work organization, divisions of labour and managerial techniques.

Readings (64 pages)

Krahn and Lowe, Work, Industry and Canadian Society:

Lowe and Krahn (eds.), Work in Canada: Readings in the Sociology of Work and Industry:

Section 1: The Rise of Industrial Capitalism

Thought Questions

As you read, keep the following questions in mind:

  1. What changes are associated with the transition from a feudal, pre-capitalist society to a capitalist, market-based society?
  2. What are the defining characteristics of work under industrial capitalism?

Reading Assignments

Krahn and Lowe, Work, Industry and Canadian Society:

Lowe and Krahn (eds.), Work in Canada: Readings in the Sociology of Work and Industry:

Key Concepts

To review key concepts encountered through the reading, prepare your own explanations of each of the following. Sometimes it is useful to compare related terms, as indicated.

Study Questions

When you have completed the assigned reading, test your understanding of the material by answering the following study questions.

  1. Exlpain how a sociological perspective on work and industry differs from other ways of looking at these topics.
  2. Identify the dominant theoretical concerns in the sociological study of work and industry.
  3. Define the main differences between industrialization and capitalism.
  4. Describe work in a feudal society.
  5. Outline how industrial capitalism changed production systems, work relations and working conditions as it emerged in the 18th century.
  6. Explain why Karl Polanyi called the broader set of changes associated with the rise of capitalism "the great transformation".

Practice Exercise

Pick some of the most far-reaching changes associated with the rise of industrial capitalism described in the readings as your "measuring stick." Now try to identify several work-related changes today that could be placed in the same category in terms of the scope and significance of their impact. What is there about the these changes that would lead the people who directly experience them to use a term like "revolutionary"?

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Section 2: Women and Industrialization

Thought Question

As you read, keep the following question in mind:

How did the changes associated with the shift from an pre-industrial economy to industrial capitalism affect women and men differently, especially in terms of their work?

Reading Assignments

Lowe and Krahn (eds.), Work in Canada: Readings in the Sociology of Work and Industry:

Key Concepts

To review key concepts encountered through the reading, prepare your own explanations of each of the following. Sometimes it is useful to compare related terms, as indicated.

Study Questions

When you have completed the assigned reading by Marjorie Griffin Cohen, test your understanding of the material by answering the following study questions.

  1. Outline how the 19th century view of the impact of industrialization on women's work been revised by more recent historical research.
  2. Assess the problems associated with generalizing from women's experiences in Britain's textile industry to other industries.
  3. Document women's role in the pre-industrial household, and assess how industrialization transformed this role.
  4. Describe how industrialization created a more rigid gendered division of labour.
  5. Assess how early industrialization in colonial Canada affected women's work differently that industrialization in Britain.

Practice Exercise

Based on your own experiences, observations and knowledge, try to identify ways in which current industrialization trends (industrial "restructuring", the globalization of the economy, new technologies, flexible forms of work) are affecting: (a) women's economic roles; and (b) the distinction between the public sphere of employment and the private sphere of family and household.

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Section 3: Canada's Industrialization

Thought Questions

As you read, keep the following questions in mind:

  1. How did the onslaught of industrialization transform the lives of skilled male craftsworkers?
  2. How did Canada's status as a colony and resource hinterland shape the emergence of an industrial economy?

Reading Assignments

Krahn and Lowe, Work, Industry and Canadian Society:
Introduction.
Chapter 1, "Industrialization and the rise of capitalism," pages 15-22.

Lowe and Krahn (eds.), Work in Canada: Readings in the Sociology of Work and Industry:

Key Concepts

To review key concepts encountered through the reading, prepare your own explanations of each of the following. Sometimes it is useful to compare related terms, as indicated.

Study Questions

When you have completed the assigned readings, test your understanding of the material by answering the following study questions.

  1. Describe the main features of work in pre-industrial Canada.
  2. Identify the early signs of industrialization in Canada, indicating how was work beginning to be transformed.
  3. Document how Canada's early resource industries helped to create a wage-labour market.
  4. Assess the extent to which racial and ethnic inequalities became a feature of Canada's early wage-labour market.
  5. Explain how, according to Craig Heron's study of Hamilton metal workers, industrialization lead to the destruction of their craft.
  6. Outline Heron's analysis of how Hamilton's metal workers resisted the march of industrialization.

Practice Exercise

Using your own community as an informal case-study (either where you now live, or where you spent most of your time growing up), sketch out its pattern of industrialization. Did the community pass through different phases, each characterized by changes in local industry, the labour market, and working conditions. In turn, how did these changes affect living conditions?

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Section 4: Corporate Capitalism

Thought Questions

As you read, keep the following questions in mind:

  1. Why did management become so preoccupied with control, efficiency, and work rationalization in the early twentieth century?
  2. What were the likely effects of the new managerial strategies on workers and their immediate work environment?

Reading Assignments

Krahn and Lowe, Work, Industry and Canadian Society:
Introduction.
Chapter 1, "Industrialization and the rise of capitalism," pages 22-25.

Lowe and Krahn (eds.), Work in Canada: Readings in the Sociology of Work and Industry:

Key Concepts

To review key concepts encountered through the reading, prepare your own explanations of each of the following.

Study Questions

When you have completed the assigned readings, test your understanding of the material by answering the following study questions.

  1. Outline how the early twentieth century was the era of corporate capitalism in Canada.
  2. Describe the two main labour force changes associated with the administrative revolution.
  3. Discuss Lowe's claim, on page 25 of his chapter in Work in Canada, that "Control was the driving force behind the administrative revolution."
  4. Explain what it mean to say that clerical work was feminized.
  5. Illustrate how managers emerged after 1900 as a powerful new professional class.
  6. Compare and contrast scientific management and welfare work as management strategies for regulating workers' behaviour.

Practice Exercise

What is your impression of a typical office today, based on your own observations, your experiences as a worker, or through your role as a client or customer? How does this image fit the model of the "modern" office outlined by Lowe in his analysis of the administrative revolution? Can you identify significant changes? What in particular has not changed, in your view?

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