How innovations affected people's lives
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Flip to reveal answersWhat must an innovation do to count as 'transformative' in this thematic study?
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Question
What must an innovation do to count as 'transformative' in this thematic study?
Answer
It must bring about a major change to the form or function of aspects of society — not just be new, but change how people actually live.
Question
Name the four IB regions used for cross-regional comparison in Paper 2.
Answer
Africa & the Middle East, the Americas, Asia & Oceania, Europe.
Question
Richard Arkwright — who was he and what did innovation bring him?
Answer
British inventor of the water frame (1769); became one of the richest men in Britain and was knighted in 1786 — innovation as huge reward for an inventor-entrepreneur.
Question
What were conditions like for women and children in early British textile mills?
Answer
Long shifts (12-14+ hours), dangerous unguarded machinery, low pay (often half a man's wage), and child labour common until the Factory Acts (from 1833) restricted it.
Question
What was Henry Ford's '$5 day' (1914) and why did he introduce it?
Answer
Ford doubled wages to about $5/day for qualifying workers, mainly to cut extremely high labour turnover caused by the mind-numbing, exhausting assembly line he had introduced in 1913.
Question
Define 'deskilling' as it applies to Fordist mass production.
Answer
Breaking a complex craft into small repetitive tasks so workers need little training — raises output but strips workers of skill, status and bargaining power.
Question
Compare: who captured most of the wealth from the British Industrial Revolution and from Fordism?
Answer
Both cases: factory/company owners and shareholders (elites) captured most wealth; workers gained only modest, hard-won wage rises (e.g. Ford's $5 day) relative to profits generated.
Question
How does 'perspectives' apply to judging the Industrial Revolution?
Answer
Factory owners and free-market economists saw it as progress and opportunity; workers, reformers (e.g. Friedrich Engels) and many historians since emphasise exploitation and suffering — same event, different judgement.
Question
What continued (continuity) despite industrial and Fordist innovation, and what changed?
Answer
Continuity: hierarchy — owners/managers still held power over workers. Change: the workplace, daily rhythm (clock-based shifts), gender roles (women drawn into paid mill work), and scale of output.
Question
What is the Green Revolution and how does it fit the 'winners and losers' pattern?
Answer
Post-1940s Asian/Latin American push (e.g. Norman Borlaug's high-yield wheat in India from the 1960s) that raised food output but favoured farmers who could afford seeds/fertiliser/irrigation, widening inequality with poorer smallholders.
Question
Why does a Section B(b) essay comparing Britain and the USA satisfy the cross-regional rule?
Answer
Britain = Europe; USA (Fordism, from 1913) = the Americas — two different IB regions, allowing direct comparison of causes, winners and losers as the mark scheme requires.
Question
Give one example of significance: why is the $5 day considered a landmark, not just a pay rise?
Answer
It created a stable, semi-affluent industrial workforce that could afford the very cars it built, helping establish mass-consumer capitalism — significance beyond the individual wage.
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Topic 7.4 hub
How did the innovations affect people's lives?
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