Changing Context of Labour from Agro+Industrial Society to Knowledge Society

An agrarian or agricultural society is one relying for its subsistence on the cultivation of crops through the use of plows and animals. The first agrarian societies arose approximately 5000 to 6,000 years ago in Mesopotamia and Egypt while slightly later in China and India. From the time when agrarian societies first emerged until the present day, the majority of persons who have ever lived have done so according to the agrarian way of life. This is the primitive form of human society. In this society, the working force is envisaged as that part of the population which is economically dynamic, though in that time the working force nearly covered the entire population. The low level of technology required the participation of almost entire population in the common tasks of producing goods and services necessary for subsistence. With the growth of a market economy in due course of economic development, the working force gradually became separable from the entire population. The working force may thus be reckoned as a function of the socioeconomic structure of society.