Deep Transitions: Mapping Long-Term Changes in Industrial Modernity
The Deep Transitions framework proposes that substantial changes in sociotechnical systems may be happening over the past 50 years that uproot the long-time dominant industrial modernity. Public aggregated datasets and digital text collections open up a way to study it. I present a case study on 5 countries for 1900–2020 to measure continuities and ruptures in this industrial modernity. The study focuses on ideas, institutions, and practices simultaneously to build towards a comprehensive view of societal evolution. Across very different countries, we find interesting commonalities and a potential gradual evolution towards a new “green“ sociotechnical system.