We’re assailed by articles and books which tell us that the world is changing dramatically because of such technology as driverless cars, keyhole surgery, contraception and social media.
But, in a sense, this has been our story for the last century and more – although Karl Polyani may have been the first (in 1944) to analyse this closely in his classic The Great Transformation which analysed the power aspects behind the transition from feudalism to a market economy.
Other writers periodically try to anticipate what they consider to be significant social change but none perhaps greater than Peter Drucker, an Austrian born in 1909, best known for his management writing – indeed the father of management. His initial education was in Vienna but he graduated in Frankfurst (in International and Public Law), practising journalism in Hamburg and London before migrating to the US where he became a US citizen in 1943.
I have a theory that people who experience different worlds (geographical and/or intellectual) are able somehow to see the world differently - and are more creative. The theory is described here. Drucker went on to use his experience of being the first person to research management in General Motors to write first The New Society – anatomy of the industrial order (1950) and then to anticipate Alvin Toffler’s “Future Shock” (1971) with The Age of Discontinuity – guidelines to our changing society (1968). In both cases he demonstrated amazing sociological insight – somehow sensing a change in the wind’s direction before it even happened. And he was probably the first person to use the phrase “post-capitalist” when he published (in 1993) Post Capitalist Society
Francis Fukuyama may have inherited his mantle when he published The Great Disruption (1999) – although Drucker lived a good age, dying in 2005. I’ve added him to the table you'll find in the 2020 post which I can't reproduce here because the blogpost people seem to have run out of editors and any table now overlaps into the right hand column! This post is best read in conjunction with A Short Note and annotated bibliography on CHANGE
Further Reading
https://asaduzaman.medium.com/summary-of-the-great-transformation-by-polanyi-c329541e8532
https://weapedagogy.wordpress.com/2017/12/27/resources-for-study-of-polanyis-great-transformation/
The Technology Trap C Frey 2019
