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Article ID: CBB596614986

Introduction and Diffusion: Useful and Reliable Knowledge in Early Modern Industrial Japan (April 2021)

Technology and Culture
Volume: 62
Issue: 2
Pages: 423-441
Publication date: April 2021
Language: English

URI: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/794371

DOI: 10.1353/tech.2021.0058

Publication Date: April 2021
Edition Details: Special Issue: Technology Is Global: The Useful and Reliable Knowledge Debate

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Industrialization Useful knowledge Diffusion of innovation; diffusion of knowledge; diffusion of technology Edo period (Japan, 1603-1868) Japan

This article explores a key theme in recent scholarship: the impact of the circulation movement of ideas and information by examining, in this case focusing on the spread of weaving techniques across Japanese markets during the Tokugawa (1603–1868) reign. The dissemination of useful knowledge in this period relied on practitioners like artisans and merchants, on wealthy farmers, and family networks in regional communities also influenced this process, as did the conditions inhibiting or encouraging the development, adoption, adaptation, and elaboration of new technologies. Mobility, public culture, and networks played a significant role in the diffusion of knowledge in eighteenth-century Europe, and Japan's weaving in the Tokugawa period provides a non-Western parallel. Thus Japan's case suggests the necessity of further discussion about the "creation" of technological knowledge beyond the "introduction and diffusion" of ideas and information in the context of the Great Divergence debate.

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Article Dagmar Schäfer; Simona Valeriani (April 2021) Technology Is Global: The Useful & Reliable Knowledge Debate. Technology and Culture (pp. 327-347). unapi

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