This study of long-term economic development differs from most that have gone before by addressing consumer aspirations rather than productive activities, and by focusing on the household unit rather than the individual. It examines a period in Western history that experienced the Industrial Revolution, but this revolution stands in the background here in order to give due consideration to the initiatives of households as their consumption goals as well as their strategies to achieve them change. This complex of household behaviors – an industrious revolution – formed the broader context in which the productive initiatives we know as the Industrial Revolution could unfold.

In the economists' world of supply and demand, an emphasis on demand as the agent of change in long-term development is uncommon; indeed, it is usually viewed as a sign of heterodoxy. Yet, in the social sciences more broadly considered, the central importance of consumption in contemporary society is treated as a commonplace. It simultaneously fuels the anxieties of solemn critics of late capitalism and excites the imaginations of postmodern self-fashioners. Between those who set consumption aside as too difficult to model and those who regard it as too self-evident to warrant further scrutiny, a large terrain has been left underexamined and undertheorized. This study seeks to contribute to a sounder understanding of an historical phenomenon that too many social scientists have neglected – purposefully neglected, one could say.