Type of society

Key characteristics

Hunting-andgathering

These are small, simple societies in which people hunt and gather food. Because
all people in these societies have few possessions, the societies are fairly
egalitarian, and the degree of inequality is very low.

Horticultural
and pastoral

Horticultural and pastoral societies are larger than hunting-and-gathering

societies. Horticultural societies grow crops with simple tools, while pastoral
societies raise livestock. Both types of societies are wealthier than hunting-andgathering societies, and they also have more inequality and greater conflict than
hunting-and-gathering societies.

Agricultural

These societies grow great numbers of crops, thanks to the use of plows, oxen,
and other devices. Compared to horticultural and pastoral societies, they are
wealthier and have a higher degree of conflict and of inequality.

Industrial

Industrial societies feature factories and machines. They are wealthier than
agricultural societies and have a greater sense of individualism and a somewhat
lower degree of inequality that still remains substantial.

Postindustrial

These societies feature information technology and service jobs. Higher

education is especially important in these societies for economic success.

Hunting-and-Gathering Societies
Beginning about 250,000 years ago, hunting-and-gathering societies are the oldest ones
we know of; few of them remain today, partly because modern societies have encroached
on their existence. As the name hunting-and-gathering implies, people in these societies
both hunt for food and gather plants and other vegetation. They have few possessions
other than some simple hunting-and-gathering equipment. To ensure their mutual
survival, everyone is expected to help find food and also to share the food they find. To
seek their food, hunting-and-gathering peoples often move from place to place. Because
they are nomadic, their societies tend to be quite small, often consisting of only a few
dozen people.
Beyond this simple summary of the type of life these societies lead, anthropologists have
also charted the nature of social relationships in them. One of their most important
findings is that hunting-and-gathering societies are fairly egalitarian. Although men do
most of the hunting and women most of the gathering, perhaps reflecting the biological
differences between the sexes discussed earlier, women and men in these societies are
roughly equal. Because hunting-and-gathering societies have few possessions, their
members are also fairly equal in terms of wealth and power, as virtually no wealth exists.

Horticultural and Pastoral Societies

Horticultural and pastoral societies both developed about 10,00012,000 years ago.
In horticultural societies, people use hoes and other simple hand tools to raise crops.
In pastoral societies, people raise and herd sheep, goats, camels, and other domesticated
animals and use them as their major source of food and also, depending on the animal, as
a means of transportation. Some societies are either primarily horticultural or pastoral,
while other societies combine both forms. Pastoral societies tend to be at least somewhat
nomadic, as they often have to move to find better grazing land for their animals.
Horticultural societies, on the other hand, tend to be less nomadic, as they are able to
keep growing their crops in the same location for some time. Both types of societies often
manage to produce a surplus of food from vegetable or animal sources, respectively, and
this surplus allows them to trade their extra food with other societies. It also allows them
to have a larger population size than hunting-and-gathering societies that often reaches
several hundred members.

Horticultural societies often produce an excess of food that allows them to trade with other societies and also
to have more members than hunting-and-gathering societies.
Jorge Quinteros Horticulture CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Accompanying the greater complexity and wealth of horticultural and pastoral societies is
greater inequality in terms of gender and wealth than is found in hunting-and-gathering
societies. In pastoral societies, wealth stems from the number of animals a family owns,
and families with more animals are wealthier and more powerful than families with fewer
animals. In horticultural societies, wealth stems from the amount of land a family owns,
and families with more land are wealthier and more powerful.
One other side effect of the greater wealth of horticultural and pastoral societies is greater
conflict. As just mentioned, sharing of food is a key norm in hunting-and-gathering
societies. In horticultural and pastoral societies, however, wealth (and more specifically,
the differences in wealth) leads to disputes and even fighting over land and animals.
Whereas hunting-and-gathering peoples tend to be very peaceful, horticultural and
pastoral peoples tend to be more aggressive.

Agricultural Societies
Agricultural societies developed some 5,000 years ago in the Middle East, thanks to the
invention of the plow. When pulled by oxen and other large animals, the plow allowed for
much more cultivation of crops than the simple tools of horticultural societies permitted.
The wheel was also invented about the same time, and written language and numbers
began to be used. The development of agricultural societies thus marked a watershed in
the development of human society. Ancient Egypt, China, Greece, and Rome were all
agricultural societies, and India and many other large nations today remain primarily
agricultural.
We have already seen that the greater food production of horticultural and pastoral
societies led them to become larger than hunting-and-gathering societies and to have
more trade and greater inequality and conflict. Agricultural societies continue all these
trends. First, because they produce so much more food than horticultural and pastoral
societies, they often become quite large, with their numbers sometimes reaching into the
millions. Second, their huge food surpluses lead to extensive trade, both within the
society itself and with other societies. Third, the surpluses and trade both lead to degrees
of wealth unknown in the earlier types of societies and thus to unprecedented inequality,
exemplified in the appearance for the first time of peasants, people who work on the land
of rich landowners. Finally, agricultural societies greater size and inequality also produce
more conflict. Some of this conflict is internal, as rich landowners struggle with each
other for even greater wealth and power, and peasants sometimes engage in revolts. Other

conflict is external, as the governments of these societies seek other markets for trade and
greater wealth.
If gender inequality becomes somewhat greater in horticultural and pastoral societies than
in hunting-and-gathering ones, it becomes very pronounced in agricultural societies. An
important reason for this is the hard, physically taxing work in the fields, much of it using
large plow animals, that characterizes these societies. Then, too, women are often
pregnant in these societies, because large families provide more bodies to work in the
fields and thus more income. Because men do more of the physical labor in agricultural
societieslabor on which these societies dependthey have acquired greater power over
women (Brettell & Sargent, 2009). In the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample, agricultural
societies are much more likely than hunting-and-gathering ones to believe men should
dominate women (see Figure 5.2 Type of Society and Presence of Cultural Belief That
Men Should Dominate Women).
Figure 5.2 Type of Society and Presence of Cultural Belief That Men Should Dominate Women

Source: Data from Standard Cross-Cultural Sample.

Industrial Societies
Industrial societies emerged in the 1700s as the development of machines and then
factories replaced the plow and other agricultural equipment as the primary mode of
production. The first machines were steam- and water-powered, but eventually, of course,
electricity became the main source of power. The growth of industrial societies marked
such a great transformation in many of the worlds societies that we now call the period
from about 1750 to the late 1800s the Industrial Revolution. This revolution has had
enormous consequences in almost every aspect of society, some for the better and some
for the worse.
On the positive side, industrialization brought about technological advances that
improved peoples health and expanded their life spans. As noted earlier, there is also a
greater emphasis in industrial societies on individualism, and people in these societies
typically enjoy greater political freedom than those in older societies. Compared to
agricultural societies, industrial societies also have lowered economic and gender
inequality. In industrial societies, people do have a greater chance to pull themselves up
by their bootstraps than was true in earlier societies, and rags-to-riches stories continue to
illustrate the opportunity available under industrialization. That said, we will see in later
chapters that economic and gender inequality remains substantial in many industrial
societies.
On the negative side, industrialization meant the rise and growth of large cities and
concentrated poverty and degrading conditions in these cities, as the novels of Charles
Dickens poignantly remind us. This urbanization changed the character of social life by
creating a more impersonal and less traditional Gesellschaft society. It also led to riots
and other urban violence that, among other things, helped fuel the rise of the modern
police force and forced factory owners to improve workplace conditions. Today industrial
societies consume most of the worlds resources, pollute its environment to an
unprecedented degree, and have compiled nuclear arsenals that could undo thousands of
years of human society in an instant.

Postindustrial Societies
We are increasingly living in what has been called the information technology age (or
justinformation age), as wireless technology vies with machines and factories as the basis
for our economy. Compared to industrial economies, we now have many more service
jobs, ranging from housecleaning to secretarial work to repairing computers. Societies in

which this transition is happening are moving from an industrial to a postindustrial phase
of development. In postindustrial societies, then, information technology and service jobs
have replaced machines and manufacturing jobs as the primary dimension of the
economy (Bell, 1999). If the car was the sign of the economic and social times back in
the 1920s, then the smartphone or netbook/laptop is the sign of the economic and social
future in the early years of the 21st century. If the factory was the dominant workplace at
the beginning of the 20th century, with workers standing at their positions by conveyor
belts, then cell phone, computer, and software companies are dominant industries at the
beginning of the 21st century, with workers, almost all of them much better educated than
their earlier factory counterparts, huddled over their wireless technology at home, at
work, or on the road. In short, the Industrial Revolution has been replaced by the
Information Revolution, and we now have what has been called an information
society (Hassan, 2008).
As part of postindustrialization in the United States, many manufacturing companies have
moved their operations from U.S. cities to overseas sites. Since the 1980s, this process
has raised unemployment in cities, many of whose residents lack the college education
and other training needed in the information sector. Partly for this reason, some scholars
fear that the information age will aggravate the disparities we already have between the
haves and have-nots of society, as people lacking a college education will have even
more trouble finding gainful employment than they do now (W. J. Wilson, 2009). In the
international arena, postindustrial societies may also have a leg up over industrial or,
especially, agricultural societies as the world moves ever more into the information age.
1. Foraging Societies
When human beings did not know how to dominate land and domesticate the animals, they had to
live together, share work, use fresh water carefully and also migrate gregariously if anything went
wrong, for example, if rivers dried up or they run out of animals. Usually men were hunters and
women were gatherers in those societies and this caused matriarchy because men were always in
danger during hunting and generally hunter members returned home -cave- with limited numbers.
Labour in hunting and gathering societies was divided equally among the members because they
were so small and mobile. There was not any political organization compared to understanding of
todays diplomacy but their decision making body included every person who live in the society and
equality conducted it. Certainly some foraging societies have their own tribal leaders but even the
leader could not decide anything about tribe, everything in those societies was decided by all
members. Their technologies were almost nothing in comparison with today but they could do what
they needed, hunting big and small animals and using their hides in order to make cloths and

gathering plants. Somehow they learned cultivation and they did not need to relocate anymore and
they were divided into two parts as animal domesticators and plant cultivators. Both of them started
to live in a certain domain.
2.

Pastoral Societies

In this type of societies, approximately 12,000 years ago, people lived in a certain place and started
to pasture animals for transportation and permanent food. Those types of societies still exist in
Somalia, Ethiopia and North Africa countries where horticulture and manufacturing are not
possible (Samatar, 1989: 35), hunter-gatherer society did domesticate animals because they realized
that using animals wool, milk, and fertility was more beneficial than hunting and wasting them.
Consequently, not only trade had started, but also non-survival class had aroused such as the
spiritual leaders, healers, traders, craftspeople. This new formation held society together in a certain
domain and nomadic did not migrate so far, circulate around the pasture primitive version of urbanand also difference of people came out for the first time; the nomadic and settled people. These are
the first forms of people who live in rural and urban areas. Moreover, as they had to domesticate
animals and use them, people need some tools and they invented what they needed. By this means
technology developed rapidly. Trade improved easily and differences between nomadic and settled
people grew up, consequently concept of social inequality started to appear compared to huntergatherer societies.
3. Horticultural Societies
Similar to pastoral societies, horticultural societies first appeared 10,000 to 12,000 years ago but
these societies cultivated vegetables, fruits and plants. Depletion of the lands resources or dwindling
water supplies, for instance, forced the people to leave. Since, they were mobile and small like
hunter-gatherer societies; there was not a non-survival class and not trade as well. Division of labour
continued, social structures did not develop and because of this, horticultural societies did not differ
from foraging societies. They could not develop because agricultural materials invented about 8,000
years ago and they could not relocate rivers and water sources, their plants dried up. It is easily
realized that why development of technology is so important and how it affects to shape societies, at
the same time in the other parts of the world, people could invent and develop what they needed but
for agriculture, technology was not enough.
4. Agricultural Societies
What cause horticultural societies to extinguish, were the late agricultural inventions around the
8,000s. With the new inventions, food supplies increased and people settled together. Population
grew up rapidly, villages came up and farmers, land owners and also warriors who protect farms in
exchange for food against enemies aroused firstly. In these societies, social inequality solidly showed
itself. A rigid caste system developed; slavery and ownership started to be too different concepts in
those lives. Caste system developed the differentiation between the elite and agricultural labourers

including slaves. Lands started to be so important, especially from ninth to fifteenth centuries, after
the understanding of feudalism developed, every small land owners saw themselves as kings and
owners of people who live for them as well. Concept of social classes spread through the Europe
and not only land owners, but also religious leaders did not have to try to survive because workers
had to give them everything that they had. Art, literature and philosophy were in religious leaders
hands because of this, time of feudalism is known as the dark ages. Due to existing monarchy,
owners set up their own rules in their lands and each lord led the society with different rules and all
of them depended on the King. This stratification prevented slaves from rebellion, workers were
sweated and classes and inequalities in Europe continued until the industrial revolution.
5. Industrial Societies
With usage of the steam power, human beings started to use machines and advanced technologies
to produce and distribute goods and services. Industrial revolution process began in Britain and then
spread through Europe and to the rest of the world, industrial societies started to develop. The
growth of technologies led to advances in farming techniques, so slavery lost its significance,
economy developed quickly and understanding of social charity and governments aids grew up.
Feudal social classes removed but then societies divided into two parts as workers and non-workers.
Karl Marx explained that non-workers are composing capitalist class and they hold all money and
also set up rules. Considering this explanation, it is easily understood that non-workers are the same
with non-survivors like lords and religious leaders in preindustrial societies. Thus, the industrial
revolution brought only the slavery extinction and there is only worker class. Learning from previous
mistakes rulers gave more opportunities for social mobility and also gave more rights than they gave
to the slaves. With changes in social inequalities people started to want their rights and freedom as
citizens and then kingdoms and autocracy lost their power on citizens. Democracy seemed more
beneficial and necessary with French and American Revolutions, nationality became more important
and so, citizens won their rights and classes existed as just economic differences. Politically
everyone seemed equal but, of course, inequalities between money owners and sellers of their own
labours to survive, unstoppably increased. Villages lost their significance and towns became places
where occupation opportunities were supplied.
6. Postindustrial Societies
The countries that the industrial revolution began, -Britain, France, the USA and Japan- now became
the postindustrial countries. These countries are users of advance technologies like developed
computers, satellites, microchips. In short, those societies are affected by the technologies at first
hand. In comparison with horticultural societies, it can be easily understood that how technology is
important to shape and characterize a society. If you want to build new sociology, read about
technology. If you want to build new technology, read about sociology. If you want to Since they are
trailblazers of technologies, they are now holding all worlds economy in their hands. There is not

rural and urban areas difference as well as people who are economically at the top and middle.
According to common view, in those societies, there is neither social inequality nor classification.
People won their own freedom by working hard, if there are any differences or discrimination, this is
caused by capitalist and global world, not the governments mistakes. That is, rather than being
driven by the factory production of goods, society is being shaped by the human mind, aided by
computer technology. Although factories will always exist, the key to wealth and power seems to lie in
the ability to generate, store, manipulate, and sell information. Sociologists speculate about the
characteristics of postindustrial society in the near future. They predict increased levels of education
and training, consumerism, availability of goods, and social mobility. While they hope for a decline in
inequality as technical skills and know-how begins to determine class rather than the ownership of
property, sociologists are also concerned about potential social divisions based on those who have
appropriate education and those who do not. Sociologists believe society will become more
concerned with the welfare of all members of society. They hope postindustrial society will be less
characterized by social conflict, as everyone works together to solve societys problems through
science. (Andersen & Taylor, 2006: 118)
To conclude, in history, there have been very different societies in terms of their level of
development, levels of inequality, political organizations and cultural factors but only those six types
explain easily which stages we passed. Moreover, in todays world almost all types of societies exist
but each of them approaches through postindustrial society even if they are not. From this research
paper, it is proved that how technology is important in shaping and characterizing society among the
economy, social inequalities and classes.
Hunter-Gatherers
The hunter-gatherer way of life is based on the consumption of wild plants and wild animals.
Consequently, hunter-gatherers are often mobile, and groups of hunter-gatherers tend to have fluid
boundaries and compositions. Typically, in hunter-gatherer societies, men hunt wild animals while women
gather fruits, nuts, roots, and other vegetation. Women also hunt smaller wild animals.
The majority of hunter-gatherer societies are nomadic. Because the wild resources of a particular region
can be quickly depleted, it is difficult for hunter-gatherers to remain rooted in a place for long. Because of
their subsistence system, these societies tend to have very low population densities.
Hunter-gatherer societies are characterized by non-hierarchical social structures, though this is not always
the case. Given that hunter-gatherers tend to be nomadic, they generally cannot store surplus food. As a
result, full-time leaders, bureaucrats, or artisans are almost never supported by hunter-gatherer societies.
The egalitarianism in hunter-gatherer societies tends to extend to gender relations as well.
Pastoralism

In a pastoralist society, the primary means of subsistence are domesticated animals (livestock). Like
hunter-gatherers, pastoralists are often nomadic, moving seasonally in search of fresh pastures and water
for their animals. In a pastoralist society, there is an increased likelihood of surplus food, which, in turn,
often results in greater population densities and the development of both social hierarchies and divisions
of labor.
Pastoralist societies still exist. For example, in Australia, the vast, semi-arid interior of the country contains
huge pastoral runs called sheep stations. These areas may be thousands of square kilometers in size.
The number of livestock allowed in these areas is regulated in order to sustain the land and to ensure that
livestock have enough access to food and water.
Horticulturalist Societies
In horticulturalist societies, the primary means of subsistence is the cultivation of crops using hand tools.
Like pastoral societies, the cultivation of crops increases population densities and, as a result of food
surpluses, allows for an even more complex division of labor. Horticulture differs from agriculture in
that agriculture employs animals, machinery, or other non-human means to facilitate the cultivation of
crops. Horticulture relies solely on human labor for crop cultivation. Horticultural societies were among the
first to establish permanent places of residence. This was due to the fact they no longer had to search for
food; rather, they cultivated their own.
Agrarian Societies
In agrarian societies, the primary means of subsistence is the cultivation of crops using a mixture of
human and non-human means, like animals and machinery. In agriculture, through the cultivation of
plants and the raising of domesticated animals, food, feed, fiber and other desired commodities are
produced.
In comparison with the previously mentioned societal types, agriculture supports a much greater
population density and allows for the accumulation of excess product. This excess product can either be
sold for profit or used during winter months. Because in agricultural societies, farmers are able to feed
large numbers of people whose daily activity has nothing to do with food production, a number of
important developments occur. These include improved methods of food stores, labor specialization,
advanced technology, hierarchical social structures, inequality, and standing armies.
Industrialization
In an industrial society, the primary means of subsistence is industry, which is a system of production
based on the mechanized manufacture of goods. Like agrarian societies, industrial societies lead to even
greater food surpluses, resulting in even more developed social hierarchies and an even more complex
division of labor.
The industrial division of labor, one of the most notable characteristics of this societal type, in many cases
leads to a restructuring of social relations. Whereas in pre-industrial societies, relationships would

typically develop at one's place of worship, or through kinship and housing, in industrial societies,
relationships and friendships can occur at work.
Post-Industrial
In a post-industrial society, the primary means of subsistence is derived from service-oriented work, as
opposed to agriculture or industry. Importantly, the term post-industrial is still debated, in part because it is
the current state of society. Generally, in social science, it is difficult to accurately name a phenomenon
while it is occurring.
Most highly developed countries are now post-industrial. This means the majority of their workforce
works in service-oriented industries, like finance, healthcare, education, or sales, rather than in industry or
agriculture. This is the case in the United States .

Source: Boundless. The Four Social Revolutions. Boundless Sociology Boundless, 20 Sep. 2016.
Retrieved

18

Jan.

2017

from https://www.boundless.com/sociology/textbooks/boundless-sociology-

textbook/social-change-21/sources-of-social-change-139/the-four-social-revolutions-761-3396/