NCERT Class 12 Sociology Change and Development in Industrial Scoiety

Which was the last film you saw? We are sure you can tell us the name of the hero and heroine but can you remember the name of the sound and light technicians, the make up artists or the dance choreographers? Some people like the carpenters who make the sets are not even mentioned in the credits. Yet, without all these people, the film could not be made. Bollywood may be a place of dreams for you and me, but for many, it is their place of work. Like any industry, the workers there are part of unions. For instance, the dancers, stunt artists and the extras are all part of a junior artists association, whose demands include 8 hours shifts, proper wages and safe working conditions. The products of this industry are advertised and marketed through film distributors and cinema hall owners or through shops in the form of music cassettes and videos. And the people who work in this industry, as in any other, live in the same city, but depending on who they are and how much they earn, they do very different things in that city. Film stars and textile mill owners live in places like Juhu, while extras and textile workers may live in places like Girangaon. Some go to five star hotels and eat Japanese sushi and some eat vada pav from the local handcart.

The residents of Bombay are divided by where they live, what they eat and how much their clothes cost. But they are also united by certain common things that a city provides – they watch the same films and cricket matches, they suffer from the same air pollution and they all have aspirations for their children to do well. How and where people work and what kind of jobs they have is an important part of who they are. In this chapter, we will see how changes in technology or the kind of work that is available has changed social relations in India. On the other hand, social institutions like caste, kinship networks, gender and region also influence the way that work is organised or the way in which products are marketed. This is a major area of research for sociologists.

For instance, why do we find more women in certain jobs like nursing or teaching than in other sectors like engineering? Is this just a coincidence or is it because society thinks that women are suited for caring and nurturing work as against jobs which are seen as ‘tough’ and masculine? Yet nursing is physically  much harder work than designing a bridge. If more women move into engineering,how will that affect the profession? Ask yourself why some coffee advertisements in India display two cups on the package whereas in America they show one cup? The answer is that for many Indians drinking coffee is not an individual wake up activity, but an occasion to socialise with others. Sociologists are interested in the questions of who produces what, who works where, who sellsto whom and how. These are not individual choices, but outcomes of social patterns. In turn, the choices that people make influences how society works.

IMAGES OF INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY

Many of the great works of sociology were written at a time when industrialisation was new and machinery was assuming great importance. Thinkers like Karl Marx, Max Weber and Emile Durkheim associated a number of social features with industry, such as urbanisation, the loss of face-to-face relationships that were found in rural areas where people worked on their own farms or for a landlord they knew, and their substitution by anonymous professional relationships in modern factories and workplaces. Industrialisation involves a detailed division of labour. People often do not see the end result of their work because they are producing only one small part of a product. The work is often repetitive and exhausting. Yet, even this is better than having no work at all,  i.e., being unemployed. Marx called this situation alienation, when people donot enjoy work, and see it as something they have to do only in order to survive, and even that survival depends on whether the technology has room for any
human labour.

Question

1. Choose any occupation you see around you – and describe it along the following lines:

a) social composition of the work force – caste, gender, age, region;

b) labour process – how the work takes place,

c) wages and other benefits,

d) working conditions – safety, rest times, working hours etc. or

2. In the account of brickmaking, bidi rolling, software engineers or mines that are described in the boxes, describe the social composition of the workers. What are the working conditions and facilities available? How do girls like Madhu feel about their work?

3. How has liberalisation affected employment patterns in India?

Please refer to attached file for NCERT Class 12 Sociology Change and Development in Industrial Scoiety