Smart Innovation Set
coordinated by
Dimitri Uzunidis
Volume 24
First published 2019 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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© ISTE Ltd 2019
The rights of Michel Vigezzi to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019946468
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78630-396-7
I wish to thank Joëlle Thomas for her patience and knowledge of the textile industry.
I also extend my gratitude to Professor Dimitri Uzunidis for convincing me to write this book and to the publication teams at ISTE-Wiley.
The notion of industrialization is one of the few concepts that encourages the sciences of economics, management, sociology and history to share their modes of analysis and their “toolboxes”, if not totally, then partially and effectively. Despite these encounters between these different disciplines and scientific fields, this notion has never generated a sufficiently broad consensus to become a concept that is indisputable and applicable without great problems.
The fact that this notion has often been presented as synonymous with the notions of “industrial revolution”, “technological change” or “machinism” has not facilitated acceptance of these multi-disciplinary collaborations. For some authors, this notion will be treated as a fact that is repeated in different places and at different times, which is almost neutral because it only concerns the emergence of new technologies independently of existing social dynamics. The importance of this technological determinism in neoclassical approaches to enterprise and production before 1970 was described by Bruno Tinel (Tinel, 2007). This determinism was then reflected in the work of André Leroi-Gourhan (Leroi-Gourhan, 1973).
Other authors, returning to the traditional Ricardian analysis, will affirm that this notion had also been analyzed not in terms of its components and mode of operation, but mainly its effects on the level of work and employment or on international trade. Industrialization was seen as the result of economic growth, the generalization of a traditional form of wage employment, and industrialization, elements that do not need to be reinvented. On the other hand, few analysts were concerned about the other impacts of industrialization on the societal fabric, the intersectoral coherence of the economy, the organization of production, social values and the strategies of economic actors. Moreover, this notion of industrialization has rarely been associated with the concepts of invention or innovation, whereas these two concepts are, undoubtedly, at the heart of definitions of technological change. These two concepts (revisited) will thus be defined on the basis of the history of thought in the sciences of economics, management and sociology, as well as debates or polemics that have focused on the notions of industrialization, invention and innovation. These definitions and contributions will also be informed by the histories of technology and of work.
Figure I.1. The problematic of this work
This question will be the basis of the structure of this book:
These chapters will progress to the identification of specific historical periods, periods defined by shared inventions, competitive innovations and their reciprocal trajectories, by the relationships between them and by the social dynamics existing during these periods:
Table I.1. Historical periods studied
| Periods of time | Main social dynamics | Period titles | Main nature of technological changes | Most relevant technological objects |
| 1698/1760 | Defense of arts and crafts | Emergence of machinism | Domination of shared inventions |
|
| 1760/1850 | Glorification of nations | The Industrial Revolution | Dominance of competitive innovations |
|
| 1850/1914 | Developing links between technologies, social relations and people at work | Domination of machinism | Domination of shared inventions |
|
| 1914/? | Crises, wars and growth | Extended machinism | Integration between shared inventions and competitive innovations |
|
The notion of industrialization is based on different representations, notions and concepts. These perceptions make it possible to propose an abstract and simplified perspective on the knowledge that it is possible to have on such industrialization.
This section will be devoted to presenting the representations, notions and concepts that will be used in this book.
To this end, some chapters will be devoted to exploring how different scientific fields can be used, ranging from economics and management sciences to the history of technology and labor, to the sociology of science and knowledge and to the history of the arts.