Industrious Revolution

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"According to Arrighi, these tendencies led to the development of ‘labor-absorbing institutions and labor-intensive technologies’ that allowed demographic growth to continue in China, in spite of natural resource constraints. Arrighi follows World Systems fellow-traveler Kaoru Sugihara in referring to this process as an ‘Industrious Revolution’.

For both Arrighi and Sugihara, the Industrious Revolution is a market-based development that had no inherent tendency to generate the capital- and energy- intensive development path opened up by Britain and carried to its ultimate destination by the United States.

Unlike the Western ‘industrial’ path, the East Asian ‘industrious’ path is characterised by a disposition to ‘mobilize human rather than non-human resources’.” (http://www.metamute.org/en/content/mr_smith_goes_to_beijing_0)