Western technologically developed societies. Apart from the non-obvious
assumption that there is a fundamental distinction, this is clearly an area of
speculation that can go in any of a variety of directions. The relatively benign
American usage has focused on the shift from industrial production to the
service economy, and the production of knowledge and information as the
main activities of modern economies. In Europe the term has been more
deeply sociological and has tended to suggest an extensive alienation caused by
an ever deeper penetration of social forces into people’s lives.
In practice the deep sociological differences between service economics and
industrial economics are probably more apparent than real. Hierarchy still
commands in people’s work lives, and the relative affluence between social
classes has not changed much. The idea that people are less individual, less
psychologically free, since the arrival of mass society, is almost certainly based
on a false conception of a golden age. It is very strange to think that the more
affluent modern worker, freed from many risks of health and much better
educated, is somehow or other more alienated than his unskilled industrial
working grandfather living before an extensive welfare society.
Post-Materialism
Post-materialism is the central idea in a political science approach developed in
the 1970s to explain changing voting behaviour, and also a general change in
political action and attitudes in Western Europe and North America. In a
modified version, the theory still attracts many political scientists, and has
almost become a paradigm in political sociology. The facts that led to the
theory largely concerned increased voter volatility—changing one’s vote from
election to election—and declining degrees of strong identification with, or
loyalty to, traditional political parties. In additionnew social movements
were attracting thousands of members, and sometimes seemed the preferred
mode of political action for those who felt that they were left of the political
centre. The core of the theory, and hence its name, was that traditional
‘materialistic’ concerns for economic welfare and security, both against private
disasters and international threats were no longer the main motivations for
political action. Supporters of the theory argued that the political generations
born after the Second World War had experienced no real poverty, economic
insecurity, housing problems, or any of the terror of war and impending war
that preceding generations had taken for granted. Welfare schemes, govern-
mental acceptance of social duties and relative success in managing the
capitalist economic systems had made the old concerns of political parties
much less pressing. Similarly, although the world was frozen in the cold war,
the bipolar hegemonies of the USA and the Soviet Union actually produced
much greater international stability than had been known for generations.
Post-Materialism