Industrial revolutions: a spurious concept
This article analyses the concept of industrial revolution, from its origins at the end of the 19th century up to the current excitement surrounding a supposed Fourth Industrial Revolution. Despite being an idea that is firmly embedded in the Western cultural imagination and in the field of academics, numerous historiographic, economic and sociological studies carried out in recent decades have deeply questioned it. In this article we will explore, on the one hand, its most widely-known deficiencies – which for many make it a spurious concept, loaded with erroneous suppositions and an obsolete vision of technological development - and, on the other, some of the ideological and political effects of its use.
ODS
Eduard Aibar>Professor of Science & Technology Studies (STS) at the UOC Faculty of Arts and Humanities and director of the research group on Open Science and Innovation (OSI). He teaches in the degree programmes for Humanities, Social Sciences and Anthropology and in the Master’s programmes for Contemporary History and Philosophy of Contemporary Challenges at UOC, as well as in the doctoral programme in the Information and Knowledge Society. He has been an instructor at the University of Barcelona, and post-doctoral researcher at Maastricht University (Netherlands) and at the University of Salamanca. He has published numerous works on the interaction between scientific and technological development and social and organisational change in areas such as e-Administration, urban planning and the internet. Further information at www.uoc.edu/webs/eaibar
