Routledge Handbook of Leisure Studies

Tony Blackshaw

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415697170
• eBook ISBN: 9781136495588
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This landmark publication brings together some of the most perceptive commentators of the present moment to explore core ideas and cutting edge developments in the field of Leisure Studies. It offers important new insights into the dynamics of the transformation of leisure in contemporary societies, tracing the emergent issues at stake in the discipline and examining Leisure Studies' fundamental connections with cognate disciplines such as Sociology, Cultural Studies, History, Sport Studies and Tourism.

This book contains original work from key scholars across the globe, including those working outside the Leisure Studies mainstream. It showcases the state of the art of contemporary Leisure Studies, covering key topics and key thinkers from the psychology of leisure to leisure policy, from Bourdieu to Baudrillard, and suggests that leisure in the 21st century should be understood as centring on a new 'Big Seven' (holidays, drink, drugs, sex, gambling, TV and shopping). No other book has gone as far in redefining the identity of the discipline of Leisure Studies, or in suggesting how the substantive ideas of Leisure Studies need to be rethought. The Routledge Handbook of Leisure Studies should therefore be the intellectual guide of first choice for all scholars, academics, researchers and students working in this subject area.

PART I

KEY DISCIPLINES

1

PHILOSOPHY OF LEISURE¹

Alexander Sager

At its core, philosophy of leisure is an investigation into part of the good life. As such, it is a branch of moral and political philosophy. Philosophy of leisure enquires into the ends that should be pursued for their own sake, the role of social institutions in supporting valuable ends, and the virtues that people ought to cultivate so as to best avail themselves of their free time. It is in this spirit that this chapter examines the meaning of leisure, traces its philosophical development, and discusses its moral and political significance. The chapter begins by doing two things: it offers a definition of leisure and distinguishes it from related concepts. In the following section it briefly traces the historical development of the idea of leisure in the Western philosophical tradition. The discussion then turns to leisure’s ethical implications. The final part of the chapter explores the politics surrounding leisure.

Understanding leisure

We have an intuitive understanding of when an activity involves leisure. Hiking in the mountains, enjoying BBQ and beer with friends, and reading a detective novel are leisure activities. Catching up with work that you’ve been putting off on Friday evening, sitting in rush-hour traffic, and scrubbing the bathroom are not leisure pursuits. Nonetheless, leisure is not easy to define. It belongs to a cluster of concepts that includes idleness, rest, free time, play, and work (to which it is often mistakenly opposed). The English word leisure has its roots in the Latin licēre, ‘to be permitted’. The concept of leisure descends from the Greek word skholē (Latin: scola) – the etymology of ‘school’ – and describes a state of freedom from necessity. To be at one’s leisure is to be free to pursue activities of value.

Free time is necessary for leisure, but not what characterizes it. Free time is a precondition to freely develop the skills and knowledge that allow for the pursuit of leisure, but not all free time involves leisure. A harried manager using her lunch break to run errands is not at leisure even though she has chosen how to use this time. Furthermore, leisure differs from idleness or laziness. We may follow Paul LaFargue (1883) and Bertrand Russell (2004) in praising laziness, but the trust-fund baby who dulls his boredom with OxyContin is not at leisure.

Much of what passes for leisure in our society is in fact rest. The ancient Greeks distinguished leisure from amusement (paidia) and recreation (anapausis). Amusement and recreation allow people to recover from work and from strenuous leisure. Leisure is reserved for the most valuable activities, activities chosen for their own sake, not for respite from the grind of life. For this reason, we would be mistaken to identify idleness with leisure. The common reader deciphering a difficult text, the striker aiming the ball toward the corner of the net, and the chef braising a fillet of salmon in preparing a meal for friends are not idle.

Play is another activity which is discussed in relation to leisure. Despite psychological and sociological accounts that reduce it to the function of socialization and learning, much play has no immediate function outside of itself (Huizinga, 1950). Though ‘amateur’ is sometimes taken as a synonym for dilettante, it still retains some of its French meaning of ‘lover of’. The amateur engages seriously and passionately in an activity for its own sake without financial remuneration. Games may build community, sharpen our minds, or strengthen our bodies, but we often play for the sake of the game. In fact, games do not qualify as leisure if they are obligatory. The child prodigy forced to practise for hours on the golf course and the systems analyst who suffers through an aerobics class on doctor’s orders are not at leisure. In his Treatise, David Hume writes of the passion of ‘curiosity or the love of truth’ that rests not only on the acquisition of true belief, but in the activity of the mind overcoming the challenges to understanding. He compares philosophy with hunting and gaming, noting that we come to value the end of the game because we value the activity, not because of its independent value.

Whether an activity is a leisure activity depends on why it is chosen. Reading philosophy may be leisure if it is done in the pursuit of wisdom, but will become onerous if it is done for the sake of a grade. Because the purpose of the activity and whether it is freely chosen defines an activity as leisure, work is not necessarily opposed to leisure. When a professional poker player earns a living, poker may not be a leisure activity. The reason is not that she is being paid – a recreational poker player betting on line may make money. Rather, professionals often lack leisure because their activity is obligatory. The professional tennis player cannot miss a game because she does not want to travel, feels tired, or has made other plans. Leisure activities, if performed merely for the sake of a wage, become labour.

We should be careful, though, of drawing too sharp a line between leisure and non-leisure activities. Many of our pursuits are complex and they may be simultaneously chosen because they are valuable in themselves and valuable as an end to something else. Athletic activity may be valuable for its own sake and because of its health benefits, which are also good in themselves. Artists may simultaneously create works of art for their intrinsic value and for remuneration. The best jobs may obligate us to perform activities that we also value for their own sake and that provide us with the freedom to complete tasks creatively.

A genealogy of leisure

In the Western tradition, philosophy of leisure has its origin in ancient Greek philosophy. In particular, Aristotle’s views of leisure dominated Western culture until the Renaissance and remain highly influential today.

Today, leisure is often defined as the opposite of the more dominant term of work. For the ancient Greeks, leisure was the dominant term; work was defined as askolia, the absence of leisure, due to the need to complete necessary tasks. Plato thought the philosophical life of contemplation superior to the life of governing the community or to the pursuit of wealth. Philosophy or the love of wisdom required leisure. In the Republic, he set out a curriculum to prepare youth with potential talent for philosophy to acquire the capacity for reflection on the good. Education includes gymnastics, music, arithmetic, geometry, and, finally, dialectic. Notably, Plato stresses that the education should not be authoritarian or obligatory, since this undermines the autonomy of the learner (Republic, 536d).

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (NE) is an investigation into the nature of happiness or flourishing (eudaimonia). We pursue some ends for the sake of something else, earning money to purchase goods or eating nutritious food for the sake of health. Aristotle’s ethics depend on his conception of human nature. For Aristotle, everything has its proper function. Plants grow and animals feel. Humans are distinct because they possess reason. Aristotle attempts to identify the highest end, the end that we pursue for its own sake and not for the sake of anything else. The human good – its highest end – will be ‘an activity (energeia) of the soul in accordance with reason’ (NE 1098a, trans. Crisp) and the best life will be one in which we exercise our distinctly human virtues.

Aristotle considers and dismisses the claim that pleasure is the highest end and focuses on two possibilities: the political life and the life of intellectual contemplation. At the end of the Nicomachean Ethics he concludes that contemplation of the divine is the highest end because of its self-sufficiency. The distinction between the liberal and servile arts emerges here. For Aristotle, human flourishing is possible only with leisure to pursue such ends. Artisans and slaves cannot be virtuous because they lack the leisure necessary to engage in activities that are valuable in themselves. Liberal arts – grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, geometry, arithmetic, music, and astronomy – are not useful, in the sense that they aim at knowledge for its own sake and have no straightforward application to other tasks. In contrast, servile arts such as carpentry, engineering, and accounting are part of vocational training.

Despite the importance of intellectual contemplation in ancient Greek thought, Greek ethics cannot be separated from the polis. Aristotle admires the political life and recognizes the importance of civic virtue, which also depends on leisure. Civic virtue cannot be achieved without respite from acquiring food and shelter. Moreover, responsible political participation requires reflection and communication, striving to move beyond one’s own self-interested ends to an understanding of the good of the community. A society without leisure will have citizens who are poorly informed and apathetic, unable to govern themselves according to what is good.

The Romans largely followed Aristotle in maintaining the dominance of leisure over work: leisure or otium is pursued for its own sake, whereas the negation of leisure is negotium. Though Romans such as Cicero sometimes saw leisure primarily in terms of rest from the important business of governance, Seneca retains much of Aristotle’s account. Reflecting in his essay De Otio (On Leisure) on the charges of impiety that led to Socrates’ execution and Aristotle’s flight from Athens, he argued that the wise man must choose a life of leisure over the political life because no state will tolerate him. The early stages of the rise of Christianity also preserved many aspects of the ancient conception of leisure. In the Gospels, Jesus says of the fowls of the air that ‘They sow not, neither do they reap nor gather into barns; yet your Heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?’ (Matt. 6:26, KJV). St Augustine’s beata vita (blessed life) is the contemplation of God. St Thomas Aquinas preserved many aspects of Aristotle’s thought in advocating for the contemplative life (vita contemplativa) (Pieper, 1998).

Nonetheless, as the medieval period develops we see a shift away from the Aristotelian ideal of leisure. For Aristotle, work was a necessity best passed on to slaves, women, and artisans so that citizens could engage in the more valuable activity of theoretical reason. He would have found incomprehensible the monastic life with its rigid division of time and its valuation of physical labour, and the exhortation of the Benedictine Order to pray and work (ora and laboura).

In the late medieval period and early Renaissance we begin to witness a transformation in the understanding of contemplation and in how work is valued. The ideal of theoretical contemplation present in Aristotle and Aquinas is increasingly subordinated to instrumental and technocratic reasoning. The task is no longer to observe nature, but to reshape and control it. Roger Bacon’s experimental method in optics and his view that scientific experimentation should be used for the good of the community anticipates Francis Bacon’s conviction that science should transform nature and society so as to alleviate human misery. Bacon’s New Atlantis sets out a utopian society founded on the application of science. The requirement in Thomas More’s Utopia that everyone work in agriculture and the trades is distant from Plato’s Republic, in which the labour of the artisan class provides the guardians with the leisure to pursue a specialized education that may enable them to contemplate the good.

Along with the shifts in thinking about the nature and purpose of contemplation, a fundamental change occurs in the attitude toward work. This occurs most starkly in the Protestant Reformation, especially in Calvinism (Weber, 2002). Martin Luther and John Calvin criticized the monastic life, which they identified with idleness, and found the Christian calling to rest in labour. As we reach the early modern period, we see the rise of the labour theory of value, with its origins in John Locke and its development by Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Locke claimed that we create value from nature by mixing it with our labour; Ricardo held that the value of a commodity is the amount of labour that goes into producing it.

By the twentieth century, the rejection of ancient ethics based on the objective end chosen for its own sake becomes personified in Homo economicus (economic man), the model of humans as self-interested, rational actors pursuing their subjectively defined ends. For Homo economicus, there is no objectively determined highest end and the ultimate arbitrator of value is the individual. The political function of leisure disappears in favour of the productive worker guided by bureaucratic and technocratic management.

The rise of the work society has alarmed many theorists, but the Aristotelian conception of leisure relies on a view of human nature and of the natural order that is no longer tenable: Aristotle saw us as having a distinct function of reason that distinguishes us from plants that grow and animals that move. Our end is the exercise of this intellectual function. Darwin’s insight that human beings evolved through the gradual, random process of descent with modification calls into question Aristotle’s account of the highest good of intellectual contemplation. It suggests the need for an account of value that is compatible with the contemporary scientific world-view.

Furthermore, Aristotle’s social prejudices and limited understanding of the possibilities of labour pose an obstacle to applying his insights on leisure. Aristotle’s conception of leisure rested on a society in which a minority were freed from necessity due to the labour of slaves and workers (and women) who performed onerous tasks so the minority could engage in politics and intellectual contemplation. John Dewey contended in Democracy and Education that the division between a life of labour and a life of leisure had its basis in a dualism between theory and practice that mirrored the division between citizens and slaves, workers, and women.

One way of salvaging Aristotle’s insights on leisure once we reject his aristocratic hierarchies and his account of the highest end is to reflect more carefully on the value of work. Aristotle was correct to observe that much work is performed for the sake of something else and serves to stunt, rather than develop, human capacities. Nonetheless, it does not follow that work need be or should be opposed to leisure. Indeed, Plato’s treatment of technē (craft or skill) attributes considerable knowledge to its practitioners – unlike the sophist, the physician, horse trainer, and smith at least know specific things. Aristotle acknowledges the importance of theoretical understanding in some crafts (technē) such as medicine.

The Marxian tradition follows Hegel in emphasizing the value of work (Sayers, 2005). In the Hegelian tradition, work is chosen for its own sake and is fundamental to human nature. For Hegel, work distinguishes human beings from other animals. It does not simply aim to fulfil immediate needs, but involves a self-conscious transformation of the natural and the social world that forms people’s personal and social identity. Work is not external or separate to us; rather, it is creative, involving intellectual activity as well as physical labour for self-realization. Through work, we dissolve barriers separating us from the natural world and forge relationships with other people.

The Marxian complaint is that under capitalism and scientific management people are alienated from their labour. One source of alienation is the degradation of work itself through the division of labour that reduces labour to a series of simple, repetitive tasks. Organizational hierarchies and compartmentalization further limit workers’ autonomy, depriving them of the opportunity to develop and exercise skill and creativity. Moreover, capitalism deprives workers of the value of their labour by selling products for a profit. Labour is torn from the social processes that give it meaning and becomes another commodity to be bought and sold (Braverman, 1988).

The Marxian tradition helps us to see that labour’s value depends on the opportunities for people to realize valuable purposes. Labour conflicts with leisure if economic necessity or authority imposes it on workers and if it is limited to mind-numbing routines. When people creatively work toward valuable ends, not merely for sustenanc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on contributors
• Introduction
• PART I Key disciplines
• PART II Key thinkers
• PART III Leisure as a socio-cultural phenomenon
• PART IV The Big Seven leisure pursuits
• PART V Uses of leisure
• PART VI New directions
• Index