Multiple Interpretations
There are multiple interpretations of what this process is. Cairncross (1982) and Lever (1991) offer four possible definitions of deindustrialization:
- A straightforward decline in the output of manufactured goods or in employment in the manufacturing sector. This, however, can be misleading because short-run or cyclical downturns may be misinterpreted as long-run deindustrialization
- A shift from manufacturing to the service sectors, so that manufacturing has a lower share of total output or employment. This may also be misleading, however, as such a shift may occur even if manufacturing is growing in absolute terms
- That manufactured goods comprise a declining share of external trade, so that there is a progressive failure to achieve a sufficient surplus of exports over imports to maintain an economy in external balance
- A continuing state of balance of trade deficit (as described in the third definition above) that accumulates to the extent that a country or region is unable to pay for necessary imports to sustain further production of goods, thus initiating a further downward spiral of economic decline
Read more about this topic: Deindustrialization
Famous quotes containing the word multiple:
“... the generation of the 20’s was truly secular in that it still knew its theology and its varieties of religious experience. We are post-secular, inventing new faiths, without any sense of organizing truths. The truths we accept are so multiple that honesty becomes little more than a strategy by which you manage your tendencies toward duplicity.”
—Ann Douglas (b. 1942)