Industry and Economy - 3 views
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THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: CHANGE AND OPPORTUNITY IN ECONOMY AND SOCIETY, c1750-c1830
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Katy Field on 20 Feb 13Remember, the debate resolution is: "The technological innovations of the information & communication revolution (1990s - present) have improved the economy more than the technological innovations of the industrial revolution (1800s) did." Stay focused on the actions that must cause an impact (the industrial revolution or the ICT revolution), and the value premise that your evidence must link back to: economic improvement.
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Although one can find the origins of industrialisation in earlier centuries and although the changes were at a very incomplete stage by the mid nineteenth century, an unprecedented shift was underway which was to change the nature of human society for ever.
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This quote is not useful for two reasons: first, it only provides a claim (the IR caused longterm changes to human society) , there is no evidence provided to substantiate that claim. Second, the claim itself isn't directly relevant because it simply says that the was a change, it doesn't present any reason to believe that these changes were improvements (which is the value premise of the debate).
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The industrial revolution certainly saw some dramatic changes in the economy and society of Britain. There was a huge increase in the numbers of people employed in industrial manufacturing, making goods of all kinds, but especially textiles, iron goods, metal wares and pottery, for both overseas and domestic markets.
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This quote provides EVIDENCE because it states specific facts like the one about increasing number of people employed, and the listing of types of goods being produced. It's RELEVANT to the debate because the facts are about an IMPACT that the industrial revolution had on the economy (# of employed people, types of goods produced), and they LINK back to the value premise (improvement) because you could argue that the economy was improving because the increased number of employed people would have more money in their pockets with which to buy things and continue the cycle of growth. A REBUTTAL might be that the evidence just says that there was a growth in the number of people employed in industrial manufacturing. This does not explicitly say that more people were working overall--they could just be switching the type of job they have, and we don't know that they're getting paid more. An ANSWER to that rebuttal could be that even though the article does not specify the growth in citizens' incomes because of the new type of employment, it is safe to say that people's economic lives were better somehow because they chose to go into these jobs, they were not physically forced, so it must indicate an improvement in their economic lives even though we may not know exactly what kind of improvement that might be.
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A smaller and smaller proportion of the working population, less than a third by the end of our period, came to live in the countryside and get their living from the land. In the early eighteenth century more than two thirds of the labour force had been in agriculture.
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This quote could be used in conjunction with another quote that talks about how living in a city is an economic improvement over living in the country to make the argument that more people were living in cities because of the industrial revolution, and that change is an improvement for people, economically. DANGER: if the evidence about the economic value of living in a city is about current day cities, it could open the debater up to a good rebuttal based on the idea that cities in the 1800s aren't necessarily the same as cities in the present.
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Population growth spurts had happened in earlier centuries but a unique change occurred at this time because such growth did not usher in mass starvation or major increases in disease or mortality (such as had occurred during the Black Death in the 14th century, for example).
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It looks like a piece of evidence about improvement, but be careful! The improvement discussed (healthier people) doesn't have a clear cause. The quote doesn't say that the industrial revolution caused this health improvement. Not only is this evidence irrelevant because it's not linked back to the industrial revolution, but even if it was, it would take an extra step to argue why health improvements should count as economic improvements. With all of the other good quotes in this source, this one probably isn't worth the effort.
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A good rebuttal tactic is to critique the reliability of a debater's source. If you cut off the ending of the URL and went to the home page, you can click on the "about" page to learn about the people who wrote the article and sponsor this website. In this case, the source is a group of historians who lobby to protect history. Since they are not a group with an agenda (like a professional group of bankers or unions would be), and they have been educated in history, they can most likely be trusted to report thoughtful and objective material. Thus it's hard to rebut this source.
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