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Manual Work

The term manual work describes the degree of mechanization of a technical operation. Other degrees are motor-manual work and mechanized work.

  • If the action is made by workers using just their own force (and at most a hand tool), then we call it manual work.
  • In forestry, manual work is not so rare as we might think. Much tree planting is based on manual work. Even in harvesting operations, the axe and the hand saw have been popular for a long time, and they still are in those countries where labor is cheap.
  • Strictly speaking, the use of animals is not manual work proper, since workers do not use their own force to perform the action. But we shall include it into the manual work category for the sake of simplicity.



» Technodiversity Glossary

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