E.P. Thompson's essay 'Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism' describes the shift from:

Mechanical to organic solidarity

Assertion (A): Herman and Chomsky argue that news in market democracies is systematically biased even without direct censorship. Reason (R): News passes through filters such as ownership, advertising and dependence on official sources. Choose the correct option.

Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A

Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A

Arvind Rajagopal's Politics after Television analyses the political significance of:

The televised Ramayan serial of 1987–88

Indian-language newspapers of the 1980s

Community radio in tribal areas

The Emergency's press censorship

Barry Wellman's concept of 'networked individualism' suggests that:

People connect as individuals through multiple personal networks rather than through tight local groups

Only face-to-face groups count as community

Community has disappeared entirely in modern society

The internet produces mechanical solidarity

People connect as individuals through multiple personal networks rather than through tight local groups

Which pairing of author and concept is NOT correct?

Robert Putnam — the culture industry

David Harvey — time-space compression

Sherry Turkle — Alone Together

John Urry — mobilities paradigm

Science, Technology and Society I: Technological Development, Time and Space, Flows and Boundaries, Virtual Community and Media

Unit 9, Science, Technology and Society, lists twelve items. This chapter takes the first five, which are about how technology reshapes the basic coordinates of social life: history of technological development; changing notions of time and space; flows and boundaries; virtual community; and media — print and electronic, visual and social. The next chapter takes the seven concerned with the state, politics, family, health, food and crime. The recurring question is the one the field was built on: does technology determine society, or is technology itself socially shaped?

1. History of technological development: determinism and its critics

Lewis Mumford's Technics and Civilization (1934) divided Western technological history into the eotechnic phase (water, wind and wood), the paleotechnic phase (coal and iron, the grim factory towns of the Industrial Revolution) and the neotechnic phase (electricity and alloys), and argued that the key machine of the modern age was not the steam engine but the clock, which disciplined time. Marx gave the classic determinist image — 'the hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist' (The Poverty of Philosophy, 1847) — though his wider theory sets technology within relations of production. Technological determinism runs through Ogburn's cultural lag and Marshall McLuhan's claim that 'the medium is the message' (Understanding Media, 1964): the form of a communication technology changes society more than its content.

Alternative to determinism	Key figures	Argument
Social construction of technology (SCOT)	Trevor Pinch and Wiebe Bijker (1984)	Artefacts show interpretive flexibility: relevant social groups give them different meanings until closure — the early history of the bicycle is the classic case
Actor-network theory	Bruno Latour, Michel Callon, John Law	Social order is built from networks of human and non-human 'actants' — machines, microbes, documents — none of which is given priority in advance
Sociology of science	Robert Merton, Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-Century England (1938); Thomas Kuhn	The 'Merton thesis': Puritan values encouraged experimental science; Kuhn showed scientific change depends on communities and paradigms

2. Changing notions of time and space; flows and boundaries

E.P. Thompson's 'Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism' (1967) showed that pre-industrial work followed task-orientation — people worked by the rhythm of tasks and seasons — while industrial capitalism imposed clock time, measured and sold by the hour, and taught workers that 'time is money' through bells, fines and schooling. Later theorists described a further transformation. David Harvey (The Condition of Postmodernity, 1989) coined 'time-space compression' for the way capitalism's drive to speed up turnover makes the world seem to shrink; Giddens described 'time-space distanciation', the stretching of social relations across distance; Castells described the 'space of flows' and 'timeless time' of the network society, in which instantaneous electronic transactions disrupt the sequential order of time.

Flows — of people, capital, images, ideas and data — cross national boundaries at unprecedented speed. Appadurai's five 'scapes' map these flows as disjunctive, and John Urry (Sociology Beyond Societies, 2000) proposed a 'mobilities' paradigm in which sociology studies movement rather than bounded societies. Yet boundaries have not dissolved: states reassert them through visas, biometric borders, internet regulation and data localisation, and flows are highly unequal — capital and elites move freely while labour migrants and refugees face walls. The sociological task is to study the interplay of flows and closures, not to assume a borderless world.

⚠️ Thompson's time, not Weber's

Weber's Protestant ethic contains the idea that 'time is money' (he quotes Benjamin Franklin), but the historical study of the shift from task-orientation to clock-time discipline in industrial work is E.P. Thompson's. If an option pairs 'task-orientation' with any author, the answer is Thompson.

3. Virtual community

Howard Rheingold (The Virtual Community, 1993), drawing on the WELL bulletin board, coined 'virtual community' for social aggregations that emerge online when enough people carry on public discussions long enough, with sufficient feeling, to form webs of personal relationships.
Barry Wellman described 'networked individualism': people increasingly connect as individuals through multiple, partial, personal networks rather than as members of tight local groups — community 'lost', 'saved' or, in his view, 'liberated' from place.
Sherry Turkle moved from celebrating identity play online (Life on the Screen, 1995) to warning that constant connection leaves people 'alone together' (Alone Together, 2011), with devices substituting for conversation.
Robert Putnam (Bowling Alone, 2000) documented the decline of American civic associations and social capital, blaming television among other factors; debate continues over whether online networks rebuild or further erode it.

4. Media: print and electronic, visual and social

Theory	Author	Claim about media
Print capitalism and the nation	Benedict Anderson (1983)	Vernacular print created imagined national communities
The culture industry	Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer (Dialectic of Enlightenment, 1944/1947)	Mass culture is standardised and commodified, producing passive, conformist audiences
Encoding/decoding	Stuart Hall (1973)	Audiences may decode messages in a dominant-hegemonic, negotiated or oppositional way — they are not passive
Propaganda model	Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky (Manufacturing Consent, 1988)	News passes through five filters — ownership, advertising, reliance on official sources, 'flak' and anti-communism as a control ideology
Agenda-setting	Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw (1972)	Media may not tell people what to think, but tell them what to think about

In India, Robin Jeffrey's India's Newspaper Revolution (2000) traced the explosive growth of Indian-language newspapers from the late 1970s, carried by literacy, capitalism and printing technology, which drew new publics into politics. Arvind Rajagopal's Politics after Television (2001) showed how the televised Ramayan serial (1987–88) created a shared national audience that the Ram Janmabhoomi campaign mobilised. Social media has added participatory, visual and algorithmic dimensions: Eli Pariser's 'filter bubble' (2011) and the idea of echo chambers describe how personalisation narrows exposure, and messaging platforms have become channels for both mobilisation and misinformation.

Key takeaways

Mumford's eotechnic, paleotechnic and neotechnic phases and the clock as the key machine; McLuhan's 'the medium is the message' represents technological determinism, answered by SCOT and actor-network theory.
Thompson traced the shift from task-orientation to clock time; Harvey's time-space compression, Giddens's time-space distanciation and Castells's space of flows describe later transformations.
Flows of people, capital and data cross boundaries unequally; Urry's mobilities paradigm studies movement, while states reassert borders.
Rheingold's virtual community, Wellman's networked individualism, Turkle's 'alone together' and Putnam's declining social capital frame debates on online community.
Media theory runs from Anderson's print capitalism and the Frankfurt culture industry to Hall's encoding/decoding, Herman and Chomsky's filters and agenda-setting; Jeffrey and Rajagopal analyse India's print and television revolutions.

Practice questions (10)

Attempt each one before opening the answer. Every explanation names the tempting wrong option as well as the right one, because that is where marks are lost.

Lewis Mumford argued that the key machine of the modern industrial age was:
1. The clock
2. The computer
3. The steam engine
4. The printing press
Show answer
Answer: A — The clock
In Technics and Civilization (1934) Mumford held that the clock, by dissociating time from human events and synchronising action, was the key machine of the modern industrial age.
E.P. Thompson's essay 'Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism' describes the shift from:
1. Clock time to task-orientation
2. Print to electronic media
3. Mechanical to organic solidarity
4. Task-orientation to clock-time discipline
Show answer
Answer: D — Task-orientation to clock-time discipline
Thompson (1967) showed how industrial capitalism replaced work paced by tasks and seasons with work measured and paid by clock time, enforced through bells, fines, schools and preaching.
In the social construction of technology (SCOT) approach, the idea that an artefact means different things to different social groups before its design stabilises is called:
1. Time-space compression
2. Cultural lag
3. Interpretive flexibility
4. Networked individualism
Show answer
Answer: C — Interpretive flexibility
Pinch and Bijker's interpretive flexibility is resolved through closure, when one meaning and design win out — as happened with the safety bicycle.
Which of the following are the ways audiences may decode media messages according to Stuart Hall? Select all that apply.
1. Oppositional
2. Dominant-hegemonic
3. Negotiated
4. Encompassing
Show answer
Answer: A — Oppositional; B — Dominant-hegemonic; C — Negotiated
Hall's encoding/decoding model (1973) identifies dominant-hegemonic, negotiated and oppositional readings. 'Encompassing' belongs to Dumont's vocabulary of hierarchy.
The term 'virtual community' was popularised by:
1. Howard Rheingold
2. Robert Putnam
3. Lewis Mumford
4. Robin Jeffrey
Show answer
Answer: A — Howard Rheingold
Rheingold's The Virtual Community (1993), based on his experience of the WELL, described online groups forming genuine webs of personal relationships.
Assertion (A): Herman and Chomsky argue that news in market democracies is systematically biased even without direct censorship. Reason (R): News passes through filters such as ownership, advertising and dependence on official sources. Choose the correct option.
1. Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A
2. Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A
3. A is true, but R is false
4. A is false, but R is true
Show answer
Answer: A — Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A
The propaganda model in Manufacturing Consent (1988) explains structural bias precisely through these filters, which shape what becomes news without any need for overt censorship.
Arvind Rajagopal's Politics after Television analyses the political significance of:
1. The televised Ramayan serial of 1987–88
2. Indian-language newspapers of the 1980s
3. Community radio in tribal areas
4. The Emergency's press censorship
Show answer
Answer: A — The televised Ramayan serial of 1987–88
Rajagopal (2001) argued that the Ramayan serial on state television created a new national-Hindu viewing public that Hindu nationalist mobilisation drew on. The newspaper boom is Robin Jeffrey's subject.
Complete Marshall McLuhan's famous phrase: 'The medium is the ____'. (One word)
Numerical answer — type the value.
Show answer
Answer: message
In Understanding Media (1964) McLuhan argued that the form of a medium — print, television, electronic networks — reshapes perception and social organisation more than any content it carries.
Barry Wellman's concept of 'networked individualism' suggests that:
1. Only face-to-face groups count as community
2. Community has disappeared entirely in modern society
3. The internet produces mechanical solidarity
4. People connect as individuals through multiple personal networks rather than through tight local groups
Show answer
Answer: D — People connect as individuals through multiple personal networks rather than through tight local groups
Wellman argued that community has been 'liberated' from place: ties are maintained across distance through multiple, specialised networks centred on the individual, a shift accelerated by the internet and mobile phones.
Which pairing of author and concept is NOT correct?
1. Robert Putnam — the culture industry
2. David Harvey — time-space compression
3. Sherry Turkle — Alone Together
4. John Urry — mobilities paradigm
Show answer
Answer: A — Robert Putnam — the culture industry
The 'culture industry' is Adorno and Horkheimer's concept; Putnam's is the decline of social capital in Bowling Alone.