Postindustrial Society

Статья посвящена рассмотрению проблем трансформации информационного общества, анализу теории виртуального общества и понятию "виртуальная реальность". Исследование демонстрирует, что современное информационное общество не идет по пути виртуализации социальных практик в смысле их переноса в параллельную, иллюзорную реальность. Наоборот, виртуальные аналоги коммуникации, обмена и производства занимают свое прочное место в физической реальности. Общество движется от виртуальной реальности к реальной виртуальности.

Theories of post-industrial society have since their earliest formulations had a questionable relation to actual processes of social change. This article explores why they nonetheless continue to hold influence. Drawing on Mannheim, it argues that theories of post-industrial society were originally formulated as utopia – hopeful speculations about the future. When their core concepts are used to describe present conditions, however, they take on the role of ideology, in
Mannheim’s sense of this term. The ideology of post-industrial society represents a specific world view in relation to work, knowledge and education. It elevates and celebrates ‘knowledge work’ and renders invisible existing forms of industry and workers’ knowledge necessary for practical work. When the present is viewed through the lens of these theories, practical work is cast as the work of yesterday and the people who do it as yesterday’s people.

Proces rewitalizacji, jakiemu został poddany kompleks przemysłowy Zollverein, jest doskonałym przykładem zmiany funkcji jednego z największych tego typu obiektów w Europie z jednoczesnym wykorzystaniem jego charakteru industrialnego. Może stanowić wzór dla wciąż niewykorzystywanych obiektów tego typu w Polsce. W referacie zaprezentuję proces zmiany, jaki dokonał się w Zagłębiu Ruhry w Niemczech, czyniąc z największego ośrodka przemysłowego Europy atrakcyjną przestrzeń dla kreatywności i kultury. Pokażę ciągłość rozwoju ośrodka od ery przemysłowej po post-przemysłową, a więc proces jego rewitalizacji, objawiającą się w przyświecającej mu idei zachowania dziedzictwa z jednoczesnym procesem unowocześnienia i ożywienia regionu zdegradowanego, borykającego się z problemami społeczno-gospodarczymi.

Advancement in the arts and sciences is a primary driver of economic production and social policy in post-industrial societies. Imagination steps back and asks what advances the arts and sciences? This book explores the collective, social and global dimension of human imagining and the ambivalent relationship of social institutions, including universities, schools, economies, media and culture industries, to the collective imagination. Basic discovery requires high levels of creative thinking: Imagination looks at the social conditions that make path-breaking thought possible on a large scale. It examines the role of aesthetic, pictorial, digital, paradoxical and other imaginative styles of thinking, and the times and places in which such styles become socially prominent and a significant force in economic and cultural production. It looks at successful societies as they are approaching their peak, when new ideas are driving them forward.

Here I outline some new thinking regarding Lefebvre's concepts of differential space and the right to the city. The previous empirically orientated chapters in the book point to the potential of differential space but have so far left its nature and processes of production unexplored. Following Goonewardena et al (2008: 13) who argue for the need to take Lefebvre's spatial triad and the production of space ideas as a point of departure and Merrifield (2011) who urges us to go beyond Lefebvre, this chapter seeks to do just that. It does so by incorporating a fusion of differential space and right to the city ideas into contemporary contexts and grounded empirical case studies in the three cities which are the focus of this book. What follows is firstly, a conceptual discussion of the nature of the right to the city and its relationship with differential space. In the discussion below I focus on the ludic aspects and politicised appropriation characteristics of differential space. Secondly, is an analysis and discussion of case study empirical research, which argues that, inadvertently the potential for differential space was created through various heritage-led beautification and urban regeneration schemes

The alpine region is undergoing a process of deindustrialization that has brought significant changes in the local communities; the large amount of brownfields in the Alps not only affects its economic growth but also the social context and the community development. This study aims to investigate the social fabric of a deindustrialised Austrian alpine community dealing with a brownfield regeneration process and to analyse the consequences of the industrial modernity from a social, cultural and symbolic perspective. For this, the wellbeing of the community in terms of social cohesion is examined as well as relevant identitarian aspects and representations of past and future. A mixed-methods research design is used and it combines data from structured questionnaire survey with data obtained by in-depth interviews and ethnographic fieldnotes.

Cities are the height of human achievement. Cities are fraught with ambivalence. We adore city life, it stimulates, entertains and excites. Conversely, urban experiences are scary, disorientating and may be physically and mentally deleterious. Cities are crucibles of democracy, yet remain cauldrons of inequality and injustice. Cities are open and tolerant, but perversely elitist and exclusionary. City streets provide unexpected encounters which can enrich our lives, or disturb deeply. Ambivalence regarding the nascent modern industrial city was captured quintessentially in the visceral eloquence of Alexis de Tocqueville's disturbingly ambivalent assertion, that 1840s Manchester was a vile, filthy cesspit from which flows pure gold, thereby allowing the attainment of civilisation while converting men of all ranks into desperate savages. Above all, it is in the public spaces of cities –  street, squares, piazzas, plazas and parks - that some of the best and the worst characteristics of urban life and society are created, observed and reproduced. These sites are the geographical focus of this book and are interrogated drawing on the spatial triad ideas promulgated by the French, Marxist, sociologist-philosopher Henri Lefebvre. Looking at history in a new light in this book means exploring the histories of shifting representations of space and ascertaining the implications for the production of space and what Lefebvre called differential spaceI seek in this book to explore the production of space and in so doing stimulate a rethinking of Lefebvre’s spatial theories and the essence of urban public space. From this overarching aim flow two research objectives: 1) to tease out the implications of the production of space for post-industrial city transformation, 2) to unravel the role of differential space in such transformation. Empirically the research is grounded in three iconic post-industrial cities: Vancouver, Lowell Massachusetts and Manchester England. Although strongly rooted theoretically, the book locates the conceptual ideas in the practice of urban policy making, urban planning and the politicised everyday use of public space, especially differential space – a surprisingly neglected concept in urban studies. The timescale is from the 1960s to 2010s.

Through technological and organizational change from the mid-twentieth century onwards work has become increasingly dissociated from the body. In terms of work the body has, in fact, become progressively obsolete, and we have been witnessing, in the 20th century, a fundamental realignment of body, work and self.. Based on an understanding of visual culture as a key element of culture in the sense of a system of symbolization that provides a social semantics to contemporary societies, this contribution proposes to read a number of figurations of the body in post-industrial societies as paradigmatic of what may be called the body’s age of obsolescence. Particular attention is accorded to the obese body, the sculpted body of the body builder, and the composite body of the cyborg. The contribution proposes to read all three body types in the light of Georges Bataille’s concept of “dépense” while highlighting the structural melancholia of the performance of the body builder and the problem of the technological self in the cyborg.

This paper contributes to a critical understanding of the production of space through an exploration of notable spatial moments in the 1990s work of the Central Manchester Development Corporation (CMDC), particularly its role in the creation of new public space. Henri Lefebvre's ideas regarding the production of urban space provide rigorous theoretical grounding for the empirical research. Two chronologically overlapping 20th century discourses: the inner city urban policy discourse from the 1960s and the modernist city planning discourse that peaked in the era of technological optimism after World War Two are shown to be vital for a critical understanding of the Urban Development Corporation (UDC) regime. The paper unravels the as yet unproblematised origins of UDCs and CMDC and shows how the reorientation of the 1960s Urban Programme by the Labour government laid the ground for some of the subsequent Conservative government's urban policy shifts. New evidence from archival sources, supplemented by interviews with key informants, is presented which challenges and disrupts some conventional wisdoms regarding UDCs and CMDC. Research findings point to the crucial role of CMDC in stimulating the creation of significant new public spaces akin to differential space, which remain of great importance for Manchester. CMDC's deployment of large scale resources compounded the spatial practice of the previous decade leading to the production of unanticipated public space potentials and the politicised appropriation of urban space. In closing, the paper highlights the unintended and inadvertent legacies of the CMDC for public space in the 2000s.

Knowledge is increasingly thought of as a common good. This is exhibited in the fact that
many central economies are moving towards economic paradigms where knowledge plays a
fundamental role. This paper explores the confluence between both processes, asking in what
ways an economic model based on the knowledge commons can open up new socioeconomic
scenarios in the face of overwhelming neoliberal financialization.

This article reviews the evolution of the concept of culture industries, when neither industry nor culture themselves are today what they were at the time when the term was coined. It attempts to explain the dilution of the term into more nebulous terms (“leisure industries,” “entertainment industries” or “creative industries”) and suggests new challenges for the research on culture industries. What is at stake is no longer an application of a Fordist production to culture, a one-directional mass communication and a mediation by experts, but rather: (1) a cultural experience which is no longer clearly separated from other activities (leisure in general, consumption and even work); (2) the communicative explosion of all industrial production in a media environment, where industrialized symbolic products are mixed with culturalized industrial products; and (3) the empowerment of the recipient, which on one hand ignores the traditional experts and on the other leads to post-productive (recreational and even creative) cultural practices.

The article argues that the institutional theory is an expedient methodological basis for household savings research. With the help of scientific and economic and logical cognitive methods it is shown that the fundamental issues of institutionalism stand for being one of the best requirement-meeting instruments of household saving behavior exploration in the era of informational phase of civilization development.

Definitions and perceptions of professionalism are continually challenged and transformed by public need, government
interaction and institutional organizations. When the goals of those three entities are focused on near-term results, this
poses a significant threat to the integrity, value and relevance of professional services. When the individual and corporate
professional’s profit margin, corporate shareholder responsibility and news media sensationalism are factored in, this
short-termism dynamic is greatly magnified. Built environment professions are seen as particularly vulnerable to this
threat, given that investments in buildings and infrastructure have long-life and high-performance service
expectations. This Commentary responds to the Building Research & Information special issue entitled ‘New
Professionalism’ (2013, volume 40, number 1) and situates the predicament of built environment professionals within
an emerging historical transition: that of the post-industrial information society with its characteristic knowledge
workers and cybernetic bases of production. Long-term virtues of the built environment mission such as
sustainability, public good and evidence-based design are shown to be reflections of the transition from industrial era
short-termism to post-industrial systemic foresight. This Commentary supplements the special issue papers with a
discussion on the broader academy’s potential role in breaking the stranglehold of contemporary short-termism in the
built environment professions.

RESUMEN La población de España ha evolucionado desde los años ochenta hacia visiones más simbólicas y asumiendo imágenes derivadas de la organización del trabajo propias de las sociedades postindustriales, fortalecidas estas por las desigualdades existentes en los demás ámbitos de la actividad social. Así, aunque algunas desigualdades han tendido a remitir parcialmente en el ámbito familiar y político, su persistencia en ambos espacios y su aumento en el ámbito productivo han fortalecido dichas imágenes en la sociedad española. La creciente intensidad del uso de la edad y el sexo como filtros en los procesos de selección a los puestos de trabajo, a los roles familiares dominantes y a la vida política ha consolidado la edad como el elemento de referencia principal para la identificación y el sexo como otro elemento de referencia cada vez más importante. Mientras, remiten las identidades basadas en los estilos de vida, una vez que su valor simbólico de la clase social de pertenencia se redujo.

The basic subject of this paper is historical and cultural heritage of some parts
of Upper Silesia, bind by common history and similar problems at present days. The paper presents  some  selected  historical  phenomena  that  have  influenced  contemporary  space, mentioned above, and contemporary issues of heritage protection in Upper Silesia. The Silesian architecture interpretation, since 1989, is strongly covered with some ideological and national ideas. The last 25 years are the next level of development which contains rapidly transformation of the space what is caused by another economical transformations. In this period, we can observe  landscape  transformations,  liquidation  of  objects  and  historical  structures,  loos  of regional  features,  spontaneous  adaptation  processes  of  objects and  many  methods  of implementation forms of protection, and using of cultural resources. Some upheaval linked to the state borders changes, system, economy and ethnic transformation caused that former Upper Silesia border area focuses phenomena that exists in some other similar European areas which are abutments of cultures and traditions. The latest period in the history of Upper Silesia gives us time to reflect the character of changes in architecture and city planning of the area and appraisal of efficiency these practices which are connected to cultural heritage perseveration.
  The phenomena of the last decades are: decrement of regional features, elimination of objects, which were a key feature of the regional cultural heritage, deformation of these forms that were shaped in the history and some trials of using these elements of cultural heritage, which are widely recognized as cultural values. In this situation, it
is important to seek creative solutions that will neutralize bad processes resulting from bad law and practice. The most important phenomena of temporary space is searching of innovative fields and methods and use of cultural resources. An important part of the article is the role of the 'network community' in the protection
of cultural heritage.

Der „Tod des Subjekts, der Geschichte und der Metaphysik“ (Benhabib), den die Postmodeme als eine aktuelle Kulturtheorie postuliert, betrifft auch die feministische Theorie. Auf musikalisches Denken und Lernen bezogen, ergeben sich verschiedene Konsequenzen, die eine feministisch orientierte Musikpadagogik beruhren und die an dieser Stelle ansatzweise skizziert werden. (DIPF/Orig.)

This paper contributes to a critical understanding of the production of urban space through an exploration of notable spatial moments in the 1990s work of the Central Manchester Development Corporation (CMDC), particularly its role in the creation of new public space. Henri Lefebvre's ideas regarding the production of urban space provide rigorous theoretical grounding for the empirical research. The paper unravels the as yet unproblematised origins of Urban Development Corporations (UDCs) and CMDC and shows how the reorientation of the 1960s Urban Programme by the Labour government laid the ground for some of the subsequent neoliberal Conservative government's well known urban policy shifts led by Michael Heseltine. New evidence from archival sources, supplemented by interviews with key informants, is presented which challenges and disrupts some conventional planning wisdom regarding UDCs and CMDC. The paper argues that CMDC's deployment of large scale resources compounded the planning and spatial practice interventions of the previous decade leading to the production of unanticipated public space potentials and the politicised appropriation of urban space. Research findings point to the crucial role of CMDC in stimulating the creation of significant new quasi-public spaces akin to differential space. What are called 'inadvertent differential space legacies' created by CMDC, which remain of great importance for Manchester are highlighted. The paper closes with a number of theoretical conjectures and reflections.

The paper was published:
Progress in Planning, Volume 85, Pages 1-52 (October 2013)
"A Lefebvrian analysis of the production of glorious, gruesome public space in Manchester "
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03059006/85

In the surge of scientific revelations concerning chaos, cybernetics and systems theory since the Second
World War, architecture has been drawn into several encounters with dynamic complexity. Architects have
often danced with this complexity, but there has never been a full embrace – the encounters only amounting
to skirmishes between two radically different perspectives. Increasingly however, these two histories of design
and science are convergent, drawn together by forces of post-industrial knowledge, society, globalization,
economic interdependence and ecological sustenance. Through past literature, that convergence can be framed
by four modes of architectural complexity – wicked, messy, ordered and natural – but the history of these
encounters has seldom been couched in terms of their teleological and dynamic influences, nor have their
separate operations been characterized or connected in a way that adds coherence. This paper addresses
this missing history by making explicit distinctions between each of the four modes of architectural
complexity, tracing their early proponents and characterizing their operations.

The paper deals with an interrelation between social and cognitive phenomena associated with transition of the society to the post-industrial epoch. Ideas triggered our study came from two different fields: sociology and epistemology. From the sociological point, we consider the Post-industrial society as a virtual society, where artificial interfaces more and more separate individuals from the real social environment.

The alpine region is undergoing a process of deindustrialization that has brought significant changes in the local communities; the large amount of brownfields in the Alps not only affects its economic growth but also the social context and the community development. This study aims to investigate the social fabric of a deindustrialised Austrian alpine community dealing with a brownfield regeneration process and to analyse the consequences of the industrial modernity from a social, cultural and symbolic perspective. For this, the wellbeing of the community in terms of social cohesion is examined as well as relevant identitarian aspects and representations of past and future. A mixed-methods research design is used and it combines data from structured questionnaire survey with data obtained by in-depth interviews and ethnographic fieldnotes.

This article presents the general description of social consciousness of the individual living life in the
frame of postindustrial, postmodern, global and consumer society in the epoch of the millennial turn.
The individual’s social consciousness is analyzed in the following ten dimensions: historical, spatial,
economic, educational, behavioral, cultural, societal, recreational, psychological, existential, which are
represented by Homos characterized in the separated subchapters.
Keywords: Homo postmillennicus, Postindustrial society, Consumer society, Globalization,
Postmodernity

This is the first issue of an academic journal, of which I am aware, to focus on Henri Lefebvre and urban planning. Urban spatial planning evolved as a concept to integrate the complex social, economic, environmental, political and land use conundrums of late 20th century society. Similarly, the spatial ideas of Henri Lefebvre encompass these issues but stress the importance of everyday life, production, culture and history. This thematic issue of Urban Planning is predicated principally on three of Lefebvre’s major works: The Production of Space (Lefebvre, 974/1991), Critique of Everyday Life (Lefebvre, 1947/1991) and The Urban Revolution (Lefebvre, 1970/2003). Lefebvre’s ideas regarding the investigation of cities and urban society have been taken up most rigorously in the fields of geography, urban studies and latterly architecture. Despite this, it is clear that Lefebvre’s five central concepts: the production of space, abstract space, everyday life, the right to the city and planetary urbanisation—provide powerful tools for the examination of urban planning, cities and urban society in the Global North and South. Anglophone urban planning first embraced Lefebvre’s ideas in the 1980s. Surprisingly then, it is only in the last ten years or so that urban planning academia and research has witnessed a blossoming of interest in Lefebvre’s ideas.

This work, published in 1984, warns about the limitations of traditional organization charts. The conventional charts are useful to represent the power relationships between different organizational units, but they are unable to show how the information resource flows throughout the human organizations.

This was the very first step of a coming breakthrough. That of goes from the “information systems of the organizations” (technological standpoint) towards “the organizations as information systems", the view adopted by thinkers who start talking about the postinduatrial society. The General Systems Theory helped a great deal to advance this way.

This chapter is an empirically-informed discussion of relevant social theory for examining the phenomenon of lifestyle migration in the United States in both rural and urban settings.  Specifically, the chapter explores key explanatory models born of research into so-called non-economic migration occurring since the early twentieth century—models that may be characterized as primarily either production or consumption oriented in their emphasis—as a context for outlining an integrated approach.  The author then highlights changes in how some Americans appear to calculate personal and collective quality of life as engendered by an emerging economic order—based on principles of flexibility and contingency—whose affects are variously shared by individuals, families, and communities.  Through a focused review of relevant literature from a range of social science disciplines, this chapter attempts to merge macro and micro levels of analysis.  The intent is to provide a means of framing and understanding the prospects for lifestyle migration in the wake of economic crisis and protracted fiscal and social insecurity and what these might suggest about not only the challenges but also opportunities faced by persons and places in the United States.

В статье рассматривается развитие представлений о жилищной рационализации и жилищных систем на протяжении развития общества (доиндустриального, индустриального, постиндустриального). На основе изучения зарождающегося на сегодня комплекса постиндустриальных условий и идей предлагается сформировать свои – постиндустриальные модели
жилищной рационализации. Анализируется возможность и эффективность применения данных моделей в сложных современных российских обстоятельствах – в качестве альтернативы индустриальным подходам при решении спектра выявленных в жилище проблем. Ключевой установкой исследования является комплексное рассмотрение рационализации в жилище как части широкого цивилизационного контекста, вместе с которым эволюционирует жилищная система, и без учета которого невозможно формирование эффективной жилищной политики страны.

The article reviews the evolution of housing rationalization ideas throughout history (pre-industrial, industrial, post-industrial societies). specific post-industrial housing rationalization models are outlined on the basis of emerging post-industrial ideas and trends. The possibility and effectiveness of their application in the current complex Russian context as an alternative to industrial approaches is analyzed to solve the identified housing problems. The core of the study is a comprehensive examination of housing rationalization as part of a broader civilizational context in which the housing system evolves and which needs to be taken into account to ensure an effective housing policy.

An aesthetic theory is offered to bridge between the strategic and physical aspects of architectural design, and the model of such bridging is shown to reflect human cognition of the several generative complementary pairs: real and ideal, affect and effect, immediacy and foresight, sublime and intelligent, and appreciation and understanding. Sections of the book address postindustrial complexity, architecture's encounters with complexity, and the veracity of this aesthetic across the domains of architecture: practice, profession, education, and disciplinary knowledge.

The alpine region is undergoing a process of deindustrialization that has brought significant changes in the local communities; the large amount of brownfields in the Alps not only affects its economic growth but also the social context and the community development. This study aims to investigate the social fabric of a deindustrialised Austrian alpine community dealing with a brownfield regeneration process and to analyse the consequences of the industrial modernity from a social, cultural and symbolic perspective. For this, the wellbeing of the community in terms of social cohesion is examined as well as relevant identitarian aspects and representations of past and future. A mixed-methods research design is used and it combines data from structured questionnaire survey with data obtained by in-depth interviews and ethnographic fieldnotes.

Introduction: local symptoms, global interactions:
Common architectural expressions of the emerging postindustrial era usually involve rustbelt iconography, urban restoration, and economic revitalization. The larger manifestations are, however, more epochal than adaptive reuse. Indeed, more profound urban transformations were portended many years ago. Thus, the more fundamental questions we must turn to are not about urban renewal or virtual architecture. As worthy as those projects are, they only responding to superficial representations. Instead we must anchor back to the underlying postindustrial forces. Evidence suggests that those forces involve separation of local scale symptomatic perceptions from systemic global
interactions. This ultimately mandates a new appreciation of
design complexity. The City is not a machine; it is an organism.

This course has four main goals:

1. Theoretical Blueprint:
This course is designed to provide broad overview of contemporary social theory and to introduce students to the writings of important social theorists of the late 20th century. We will discuss complex and interrelated social, religious, cultural, political and economic issues and explore how social theorists have dealt with them. This course will provide you with a foundational understanding of contemporary social theory and familiarize you with terms and concepts such as modernity, post-structuralism, critical theory, postmodernism, feminist theory, post-colonialism, postindustrialism, and cultural studies.

2. Develop a Theoretical Toolbox:
The readings and lectures are designed to help you develop a theoretical toolbox in which to develop a deeper critical perspective of the world around you. We will not engage the readings and authors simply to regurgitate the intentions of the authors, rather we will analyze the ways in which they have engaged the changes and challenges of their worlds within their personal and sociohistorical contexts. This will help us organize the critical tools we have collected in our theoretical toolbox.

3. Organize and Sharpen Critical Tools:
The weekly blog comments and class discussions will be the medium by which we organize and sharpen our critical tools. By reflecting upon our personal and sociohistorical context and engaging the thoughts of our colleagues, we will build a theoretical toolbox better equipped to confront the changes and challenges our society encounters within our own sociohistorical context.

4. Theoretical Internship:
Our blogs will operate as a theoretical internship. This internship will be our opportunity to move from students of theory to theorists of the world in which we live. While writing our blogs, we will be forced to think more deeply about both the readings and our own thoughts. We will train ourselves to think more critically and communicate our theoretical constructions to those around us.