ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author proposes to trace out the implications of the neutral or indeterminate role of industrialization as an agent of social change. These implications are of two sorts: those referring to the scholarly tasks of studying, analyzing, and explaining the social role of industrialization, and those referring to the practical problem of seeking to guide and control the social changes that develop in the wake of industrialization. The traditional approach rests on the premise that industrialization is a causative agent that produces specific kinds of social consequences. Careful scrutiny of the social effects commonly attributed to industrialization will show that almost every one of them could occur as a result of factors that are not part of the industrializing process. In indicating the basic lines of social development to which industrialization logically leads, one may form penetrating insights into the empirical operation of industrialization and, similarly, have an important set of guidelines for social policy.
