Industrialization and Variation in Social Structure: an Empirical Test of the Convergence Hypothesis

concluded that social systems become more uniform and societies in general become more alike as they industrialize. While the convergence hypothesis has generated a good deal of discussion and controversy in the intervening fifteen years, reports of empirical tests of the concept have been limited. This paper summarizes such an attempt utilizing the techniques of cross-national research across a group of fifty-nine developing countries. The theoretical underpinnings of the hypothesis will first be discussed, the concept will then be restated in terms of testable hypotheses, the empirical findings will be reviewed, and, last, the conclusions will be presented. II, Industrialization and social change Reduced to its essence, industrialization entails the use of inanimate 2 sources of power-tools and machines-to multiply human effort in production. As its raison d'etre is an increase in output per unit of (human) input, broadscale industrialization results in an increased societal emphasis on efficiency which, given the nature of the machine pleads to larger scale productive units. There is thus a central logic to industrialization, a logic which leads to an increased emphasis on efficiency and scale. As Moore has observed, it is not reasonable to expect industrialization to be neutral in its social consequences. Rather, evidence from both the West and the developing countries indicates that industrialization tends to be a "universal social solvent." The logic of the machine, the pressure it exerts for increases in efficiency and scale, is inconsistent with the * The author would like to thank Charles A, Myers and Clark Kerr for their comments and encouragement. 0725880-2 basic structure of traditional society. Widespread mechanization of production is difficult (if not impossible) to achieve within the bounds of a traditional society where roles are diffused and ascribed, and the economic, social, and religious aspects of life 9 are often interwoven as a whole cloth. This conflict between mechanization and social structure results in what is perhaps the most important immediate effect of industrialization, the different iation of roles or the division of labor. Development of a mechanized and occupationally differentiated system of production, in turn, results in pressures for increases in both horizontal and vertical mobility and for changes in the basic patterns of social organization , A relatively rigid and stable stratification system, with both status and roles ascriptively determined, directly conflicts with the "functional requisites of a society with expanding and progressing economic activities," To the extent efficiency is …