June 16, 2022 Show by Gabor Scheiring & Anne-Marie Jeannet Industry is more than just a source of jobs and income: it is an institution. A collapse of institutions creates socio-economic disintegration. In this essay, building on classic social theory and recent empirical work, we argue for a novel approach to deindustrialization as a form of socio-economic disintegration. Deindustrialization—the shift from an industrial to a service-based economy—is ubiquitous in advanced economies. It reshapes social cohesion and the division of labor both inside and outside of the family. It reconfigures identities and class relations. It also affects demographic processes through outmigration, changes in mortality, mobility, and family formation, which often lead to regional population decline. Deindustrialization also opens new possibilities to create more just and sustainable futures for old industrial areas, depending on how well politics and policies respond. Despite these pervasive and complex socio-political implications, most research has concentrated on the narrowest aspects of the phenomenon, such as job loss and income decline.
Deindustrialization as socio-economic disintegration: a theoretical framework Classical sociology emerged in response to the socio-economic disintegration of traditional societies and their transformation into modern capitalist ones. The founders of sociology—Marx, Durkheim, Weber, and Tönnies—highlighted how industrialization destabilized traditional communities and brought deep suffering to the masses of impoverished workers. Sociology in the 20th century responded by highlighting how industrialization gave rise to an institutional framework that was crucial for social integration and democracy. Industrialization engendered the formation of stable identities, strong working-class communities,1 and “industrial citizenship,”2 which generalized trust and stabilized democracy.3 Despite these path breaking sociological studies on industrialization, contemporary research rarely utilizes classical social theory, focusing instead on well-defined but narrower aspects of the subject. Given the socio-political implications of deindustrialization, we need comprehensive accounts of its multifaceted, long-term ripple effects. In contrast to neoclassical economists, sociologists and proponents of the socio-economic perspective recognize that individuals in the labor process are more than wage earners and consumers. Class relations encompass economic production and social reproduction, which are two sides of the same coin, functioning as a “system of interdependent parts.”4 Deindustrialization’s effects can be seen in economic production, and these spill over into the domain of social reproduction, affecting politics, health, and population dynamics.
Figure 1. Deindustrialization as socio-economic disintegration: a theoretical framework6 Deindustrialization is a prime source of change in the field of economic production. Its impact includes: (1) labor market dislocation (job/income loss), (2) increased exploitation (workload, precarity), (3) increased social inequality (income, race/ethnicity), and (4) disruption of community services. The extant literature has thoroughly analyzed these aspects, so there is no need to elaborate on the details here. Beyond this limited focus on deindustrialization’s effects on economic production, more research is needed on its impact on social reproduction. Below, we present some examples that briefly explore implications such as physical suffering, job strain, fatalism, increased domestic workload, anomie, community disintegration, and alienation, and their ramifications for democracy and population health. However, this list is not exhaustive; such a research agenda should be open to other questions exploring the long-term indirect effects of deindustrialization.
Second, increased exploitation leads to (b) job strain. As Marx noted, “If the unnatural extension of the working day, which capital necessarily strives for in its unmeasured drive for self-valorization, shortens the life of the individual worker, and therefore the duration of his labor-power, the forces used up have to be replaced more rapidly, and it will be more expensive to reproduce labor-power.”7 Exploitation through relative surplus value extraction increases job strain. Job strain, work stress, precarious employment, and work schedule instability correlate with several adverse outcomes, from ill health to lower fertility and political apathy. Increased exploitation and the spread of precarious jobs are important causes behind the disenchantment with liberal democracy and the rise of populism. Third, labor market dislocations cause (c) fatalism. According to Durkheim, fatalism is a state of “futures pitilessly blocked, and passions violently choked by oppressive discipline,” a failure to live according to socially prescribed and internalized identities.8
Fourth, the disruption of public services also leads to (d) increased domestic workload. Non-commodified institutions are crucial to mitigating the inherent tension between economic production and social reproduction in families.11 Families (primarily women) produce “free” public goods that underpin wage labor and market-based production for social reproduction. Unpaid care responsibilities and declining access to public or private care services intensify domestic workload, leading to higher stress, lower fertility, and worse self-reported health. Fifth, social inequalities and the disruption of services lead to (e) anomie. Sudden economic change (crisis or rapid growth) propels some to amass immense wealth while others fall behind. The erosion of public services previously tied to companies contributes to the spread of unregulated (or less regulated) markets. When this happens, individuals think that the distribution of hierarchy is unjust, and society’s moral order breaks down. Durkheim labeled this situation anomie. Under these circumstances, “men are more inclined to self-destruction,”12 leading to increased suicides or adverse health behavior such as alcohol or drug abuse. Empirical research has also established economic anger as among the most potent individual-level factors driving the support for populism. Sixth, labor market dislocation, exploitation, and the disruption of communal services lead to (f) community disintegration.
Seventh, as Marx described, commodification, exploitation, and the disruption of services generate (g) alienation. Alienation is a “pathological cognitive state” that “occurs in response to the inequitable interactions that take place within the dehumanizing constraints of the capitalist labor process.”14 Alienation elucidates the social background of the psychological literature on “learned helplessness,” i.e., the negative consequences of being unable to control suffering.15
Empirical examples In recent years, citizens have expressed their anger in response to deprivation and alienation through politics. The decline of the industrial sector has disrupted the social contract between ordinary citizens and political elites in democracies, with potentially adverse implications for satisfaction with democracy. The entanglement of the dual processes of industrialization and democratization has meant that positive citizen assessments of democracy have become contingent upon improving living standards for production workers and the continued availability of industrial work. This established an underlying social contract whereby citizens expect a “good” democratic state to use policy instruments to foster an economy that provides “good” industrial production jobs. In this sense, notions of industrial production and work are socially entrenched in the expectations of the polity, which may gradually adapt but can be expected to lag behind a rapidly restructuring economy.
Deindustrialization’s political consequences are not only changing what citizens think about their government but also eroding their political engagement in the first place. In a recent related study, Jeannet investigates how deindustrialization contributed to unequal political participation amongst the working class in the United States.17 Using longitudinal panel data on political behavior across three biological generations in the United States (1965-1997), the study shows that respondents who grew up in working class families are less likely to vote as adults regardless of whether they themselves have working class occupations. The transmission of unequal participation is partially mediated by the voting behavior of the parent who models this behavior for their children. The second generation of respondents transmits low political participation to their offspring in the third generation. This study implies that occupational structures of industrial America are still politically relevant and that inequalities in political participation remain a legacy among the biological descendants of American working-class families from the 1960s. Research in the future could also compare how deindustrialization affects political participation in working-class cultures that differ from the American experience. The legacy of deindustrialization not only affects how people live but also how they die. Research by Anne Case, Angus Deaton, and others on the causes of the “deaths of despair epidemic” has highlighted deindustrialization’s negative health effect in the U.S.18 These deaths of despair involve rising mortality from substance use disorders and self-harm at the bottom of the class structure. There is a growing body of socio-economic scholarship on deaths of despair focusing on North America. Violent social dislocations wrought by rapid economic change such as plant closures, robotization, and attendant public policies are the prime upstream causes. However, deindustrialization’s adverse health effects do not stop at the American border. Foreshadowing today’s epidemic of deaths of despair, an unprecedented mortality crisis hit Eastern Europe 30 years ago as ex-socialist countries transitioned to capitalism. As Case and Deaton highlight, “it is no exaggeration to compare the long-standing misery of these Eastern Europeans with the wave of despair that is driving suicides, alcohol, and drug abuse among less-educated white Americans.”19
While deindustrialization’s impact on the health of workers in the American Rust Belt has received a great deal of attention, researchers have thus far neglected its role in the postsocialist mortality crisis.21 In a recent study, Scheiring et al. show that, alongside rapid mass privatization, industrial decline may have been a crucial determinant of the postsocialist mortality crisis. The authors fit multilevel survival and two-way fixed effect panel models covering 52 towns and 42,800 people over the period 1989-1995 in Hungary, and 514 medium-sized towns in the part of Russia lying within the geographical borders of Europe, west of the Ural Mountains. The results show that deindustrialization was significantly and directly associated with male mortality in both countries and indirectly mediated by adverse health behavior (alcohol abuse). Both countries experienced severe deindustrialization, but social policies have offset the negative health effect of Hungary’s more immense industrial employment loss. This shows that central, regional, and local governments have a huge role in mitigating the disintegrative effects of deindustrialization. Finally, new research following the theoretical framework of deindustrialization as socio-economic disintegration could also utilize qualitative approaches. A recent study by Scheiring and King in Theory and Society22 presents one potential application, exploring the role of deindustrialization in adverse health outcomes by relying on qualitative life history interviews and a theoretical framework combining insights from Marx and Durkheim. Such qualitative analyses allow an in-depth look into the lived experience of deindustrialization. Qualitative studies are particularly well-suited for theory development to elucidate the complexities of deindustrialization’s adverse effects, while multivariate regressions necessarily simplify these
multi-causal mechanisms. “The Day After”: SASE mini-conference on deindustrialization
Participants will address many facets of deindustrialization’s consequences, but we especially encouraged work that focuses on understudied or misunderstood aspects of the phenomenon. Several papers we received cover areas currently underrepresented in deindustrialization studies, such as the experience of women, ethnic minorities, and middle and low-income countries undergoing premature deindustrialization. We organized the mini-conference around contributions exploring the following areas. 1) deindustrialization and the crisis for American politics and health; 2) confronting the legacy of deindustrialization in Central and Eastern Europe; 3) governance and industrial policies as responses to decline; 4) social transformations of social identity, civic participation, and health outcomes; 5) political consequences for party support and electoral change. Participants will engage with deindustrialization’s pressing social and political aspects in the 21st century across European, Asian, and North American contexts. The emerging interdisciplinary scholarship on deindustrialization is a promising area that addresses some of the most pressing contemporary social problems. By utilizing comprehensive sociological frameworks and elucidating the ripple effects of deindustrialization as socio-economic disintegration, such new perspectives can push the boundaries of extant knowledge and improve the life chances of those impacted by the loss of industrial capacities. Footnotes What are the effects of deindustrialization?Deindustrialization and job cuts often lead to long periods of unemployment, intermittent employment and increased underemployment, and the effects transcend simply the loss of pay, medical benefits and purchasing power.
What was a major effect of deindustrialization on industry itself?During deindustrialization, the declining share of employment in manufacturing appears to mirror a decline in the share of manufacturing value added in GDP. At first glance, this decline would suggest that domestic expenditure on manufactures has decreased while expenditure on services has increased.
How does deindustrialization affect the environment?Reduced environmental degradation in the domestic economy
For example, in 2019, they accounted for about 23% of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, some of which came from burning fossil fuels for energy. Thus, reduced manufacturing activities reduce pollution and carbon emissions to the environment.
What are the main causes of deindustrialization?The main reason for deindustrialization is the faster growth of productivity in manufacturing than in services. North-South trade has played very little role in deindustrialization.
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