3.5 Postindustrial Society

The concept (Daniel Bell's coinage): the economy's centre of gravity shifting from goods to services, information and knowledge — the tertiary/quaternary sectors; the knowledgeworker; technology and information as the productive core; global networks (Castells's network society). Social organisation: education as the central institution (credentials — Sociology Unit 6.5); flexible and precarious work (the gig economy); digital life (identity, community, politics online — the cyber-culture anthropology of the 2010s+); globalisation's cultural economy (Appadurai's scapes — Sociology Unit 4's flows); urban majority world; demography ageing in richcountries, youth bulges in Nepal's. Order institutions: law's information-age problems — data, platforms, cyber-crime (Legal English-II Unit 5.10's ledger), AI governance; the state's fiscal strain (welfare promises against footloose capital). Nepal's case: "prematurely postindustrial" (Economics-I's phrase) — remittance-financed service economy, IT outsourcing and freelancing, e- commerce and digital payments leapfrogging landlines; all five types coexisting: Raute band, trans-Himalayan herders, hill agrarian villages, the manufacturing fringe, and Kathmandu's digital class — one country, the whole typology (the exam's closing line).