Industrial societies need a radical change — a deep transition

The current crisis requires reshaping industrial modernity––foundational societal assumptions about nature, science, and technology developed during the last 250 years. We seek ways to achieve that in Estonia and elsewhere.

Project

The project maps the rise and crisis of industrial modernity in the 20th century, identifies the countries most likely to redefine industrial modernity, and applies the results to Estonia.

This project is financed by the Estonian Research Council (PRG2160).

Earlier work

This research project is a continuation of the Estonian Research Council-funded project “Reshaping Estonian energy, mobility and telecommunications systems on the verge of the Second Deep Transition (PRG 346).”

Research questions

Rise and crisis

How has industrial modernity changed between 1900 and 2025 in different countries?

Current situation

In which countries is the legacy of industrial modernity the smallest and the likelihood of the Deep Transition the greatest?

Change in Estonia

How can this knowledge be applied to transform industrial modernity in Estonia?

Industrial Modernity Index (2024)

Where is the Second Deep Transition most likely?

The recent Industrial Modernity Index measures the thickness of the layer of industrial modernity globally.

Read the paper

Slide 2

Long-term country-level evidence of major but uneven ruptures in the landscape of industrial modernity

We identified ruptures in industrial modernity in five countries: Australia, India, Germany, the US, and USSR/Russia.

Read the paper

Slide 3

Deep Transitions: Towards a comprehensive framework for mapping major continuities and ruptures in industrial modernity

We provided a multi-dimensional and multi-domain measurement of industrial modernity.

Read the paper

Project workflow

Tracking the evolution of industrial modernity

We combine the text mining of various newspapers, existing databases, secondary historical literature and archival sources to measure the long-term evolution of industrial modernity, including Estonia and its neighbours.

Mapping the current landscape of industrial modernity

We combine country-level data on environmental, scientific and technological ideas, institutions and practices into a new index to understand how different countries, including Estonia, are currently constrained by the historical legacy of industrial modernity.

Future scenarios for Estonia for the year 2055

We create a set of future scenarios in which the transformation of industrial modernity has contributed to the deep sustainability turn in Estonia in 2055. We use techniques from futures studies that have been developed to challenge various taken-for-granted assumptions.

Research team

Next: Industrial modernity

Our work focuses on both major pillars of industrial modernity –– environment as a blindspot and overconfidence in technoscience. Although the dramatic impacts of climate change and loss of biodiversity dominate the newsfeed and public imagination, we believe that more effort should be spent on rethinking how societies think about, regulate, and develop science and technology.