Work, Unemployment and Leisure

Rosemary Deem

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN: 9780415008600
• eBook ISBN: 9781134985074
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Rosemary Deem provides students with a concise introduction to a range of issues and debates surrounding work, unemployment and leisure in contemporary societies. Beginning with an examination of the social and historical factors which have shaped work and leisure patterns in modern Britain, she shows how the boundaries between them are culturally constructed and change over time. As well as looking at the effects of class, Work, Unemployment and Leisure also considers gender, race and ethnicity dimensions. The author takes a wide view of work, encompassing work carried out both within and outside the formal economy. The chapter on unemployment considers the lives of those who are unemployed, and the impact of unemployment on work and leisure. There is a critical analysis of leisure itself and some recent controversies are considered. The final chapter contains a discussion of the future of work and leisure in industrial societies.

1
Introducing work and leisure

The terms work and leisure are likely to be extremely familiar ones to you, since they are in common use in our everyday lives. What this book hopes to do is to take you beyond your own experiences of these two phenomena into a sociological exploration of the meanings, structures, and patterns of work in contemporary societies, with a particular focus on the United Kingdom. It will look at the relationship between working and being involved in leisure, different varieties of work including employment in the formal economy, casual work, and forms of unpaid work, the effects of unemployment, and varieties of leisure. There will also, in the final chapter, be a discussion about change in work and leisure. In so doing there will be a particular focus on empirical studies, although theoretical perspectives will not be forgotten altogether. If however you are wanting very basic information about sociological perspectives and the sociology of work, you would be well advised to precede your reading of this book with a prior reading of a standard introductory textbook such as Haralambros (1985), because lack of space will prevent this book from dwelling on topics like bureaucracy, industrial conflict, and occupational associations, amongst others. However, what the book will do is to relate the study of work and leisure to a considerable number of other areas including class stratification and other social divisions, culture, the state, the family, and education.

Berger (1963) has said that ‘the first wisdom of sociology is this—things are seldom what they seem’ and this is particularly true of work and leisure. Firstly we tend to assume that things are today much as they have always been; that our notions of work and leisure are timeless, when historically it is easy to show that for example such taken for granted things as paid holidays are a very recent development. Secondly, we also tend to assume that the experiences of others are similar to our own; that if our idea of leisure is watching TV or going to the pub then so is everyone else’s. But gender, class, and age, for example, have a powerful effect on what leisure we have, what we do with it, and how much we value it. The same is also true of work – there are many different experiences and meanings, so that a happy factory worker, an unhappy secretary, an unemployed woman, and a 70-year-old retired man will relate to and perceive paid and unpaid work in different ways. Nevertheless our own ideas about work and leisure provide a valuable jumping-off point; we are after all just as much a social product as the next person and our ideas are seldom unique. So let’s spend just a little time thinking about how leisure and work might be defined.

Activity

Write down in not more than two sentences what the terms work and leisure mean to you. Then get someone else, preferably someone unlike yourself, to tell you what they understand by these terms (e.g. if you are female ask a male, if you are a teenager ask an adult) and compare the two sets of definitions.

You may well have defined work and leisure as two things which are opposite to each other; work is something we are obliged to do, like writing an essay, sitting an exam, or earning a living, whilst leisure is something which we choose to do and find enjoyable (such as swimming, listening to music, playing football, going out for a meal) when we are not working. The other person you asked may have had similar ideas to yourself; but it’s possible for example that if you asked a busy housewife what leisure was, she’d say she didn’t have any or that she relaxed by watching TV whilst ironing and supervising her children. If you asked a professional worker, say a residential social worker, they might say that their work and leisure blend into one and they can’t distinguish them – both are enjoyable. An unemployed person might say that work in the form of a job is something they’d like to do if they had the chance because it provides money and status, but that they have far too much leisure or ‘time on their hands’. Defining work and leisure, then, is far from straightforward, since any definition needs to be set in its social and historical context; there’s no such thing as a universal definition of either term. But it may be useful to look at a couple of definitions relevant to contemporary industrial societies.

Finnegan (1985a) suggests that the following are possible characteristics of work in contemporary Britain: a high division of labour and specialization of tasks (unlike a society where there is subsistence farming say, and everyone does everything), differentiation of the economic from other aspects of society (for example the family or religion), a relative separation of work from leisure (although as we’ve seen this doesn’t hold for everyone), bureaucratic and impersonal organization of most work, and an association of work with monetary rewards (most people get paid for work). Now this definition doesn’t encompass all aspects and forms of contemporary work (for example housework or care of children in the family) nor does it focus on the obligatory nature of most work under capitalism. But it does cause us to think about the complex nature of work.

Roberts (1983) talks about a definition of the major elements of leisure which allows exploration of the meaning of leisure as a problem rather than laying down categorically what that meaning is. His three elements are: firstly a type of relatively free or spare time after social, economic, and physiological needs have been met; secondly a type of activity in which play or recreation is an important aspect, separated out from the rest of life by ‘time, place and rules’; and thirdly an experience with its own rewards and satisfactions, that is it isn’t something we do because we have to or because we get paid for it. Once again, as with Finnegan’s definition, it isn’t completely ideal nor does it cover every possible situation (some people may not have any even relatively free time, for example) but it does get us out of an impasse for the time being.

The historical context of work and leisure

Finnegan and Roberts both set their definitions quite deliberately in a particular historical and societal context, that of contempoary industrial societies. But of course work and leisure have undergone many historical changes even within a single society. Leisure itself is not simply a product of industrialization, although it is unlikely that those engaged for instance in subsistence farming would have had much ‘free time’ available to them. But Wilensky (1960) suggests that in the medieval period there were many holidays, possibly as many as one day in three, and Parker (1983) as a result questions whether the relationship between growth of leisure and economic development has been as great as sometimes argued. What is apparent is that in some past societies, for example in the Roman Empire, only a privileged class enjoyed leisure, and such class links have not disappeared. Not only leisure but work too has undergone significant changes over time. These have included the nature of work (for example the shift from agricultural to industrial work, or the development of housework as households and housing have themselves altered), its location (much employment since industrialization has taken place outside the home), organization (the growth of rational and bureaucratic workplaces), the social relationships between workers, how work relates to social inequalities, and the ways in which work is rewarded. In Chapters 2 and 3 I shall be looking more closely at the shape of contemporary work.

In much of the literature on the sociology of leisure there is an assumption that leisure and work are inextricably linked. Burns (1973), in a classic essay, has examined how industrialization, in bringing forward new forms of work and production, also brought forward new forms of leisure and consumption. He points to two particular aspects of this process. Firstly there was the political struggle by industrial workers to wrest free time from the working day, marked in the nineteenth century in Britain by the Ten Hour Act and subsequently by the gradual advent of paid holidays. This perception of leisure as a right, says Burns, came about because since industrialization, work and leisure had come to be seen as increasingly separate in a way not true of preindustrial life. Employment had come to occupy upwards of seventy hours a week for mid-nineteenth-century factory workers and many saints’ days and religious festivals had been suppressed. These struggles not only created a particular form of leisure but also indelibly stamped it with overtones of class and (unrecognized by Burns) gender divisions. The second part of the process which Burns draws attention to was the ways in which leisure under industrialism was ‘sanctioned, defined and organized in entirely different terms. The new leisure of the working classes represented a vacuum which was largely filled …by amusement industries’ (Burns 1973:45). Commercialization of leisure, closely paralleled by bureaucratization, began to take place, taking in drinking, racing, football, boxing, and newspapers before the end of the nineteenth century, so that consumption of goods and services became part and parcel of leisure.

These processes were clearly very important in shaping leisure in industrial societies. But they tell us only an incomplete story. Although it is true that working-class women were an important part of the industrial workforce, particularly in cotton and textile industries, the fight for leisure as separate from work was a battle waged largely by the male working class. Nineteenth-century women in industrial jobs, whether single or married, were likely to be heavily engaged in housework and childcare. Hence any time not taken up in employment was likely to be spent doing unpaid chores rather than on enjoying commercial leisure. Other occupations commonly done by women such as domestic service were certainly not covered by legislation about hours of work. Middle-class women, unless single, were unlikely to be in employment, and although this meant time for leisure and ‘accomplishments’ such as music and embroidery as well as supervision of domestic staff, there was, as Hall (1982) has pointed out, none of the much vaunted separation of work and home which was the experience of middleclass males. The work middle-class housewives had to do was, she suggests, more onerous than often thought. Not only this, but the separation of their spouses’ work from the home meant that far from engaging in commercialized leisure, middle-class women were cut off from public social life altogether. Women’s leisure then was likely even in the nineteenth century to take different forms from that of men, there was less of it because it had to contend more often with the incursion of unpaid work into time free from paid employment, and it was likely to be much more privatized.

In the twentieth century itself changes have continued to affect work and leisure, with the occupational structure altering considerably after both world wars. Developments have been taking place in the design of work, technology, and control over workers and production. There has been increased state intervention in industry, commerce, and employment practices, as well as in industrial relations, and a massive increase in the numbers of married women in employment since the Second World War. Periods of high unemployment have been experienced in the 1930s, 1970s, and 1980s whilst at the same time working hours have gradually reduced and paid holidays have increased for those in jobs. Both in the 1930s and at the present time in the 1980s there have been discussions about the impact of unemployment and reduced working hours on leisure and the prospects of a more leisured society. Strangely the latter still seems a long way off and some of the reasons why will be discussed in the final chapter.

Leisure has also seen changes, from the advent of mass car ownership to the widespread possession of television sets and videorecorders. The public leisure of the 1930s with rambling clubs, uniformed organizations, and ballroom dancing has gradually given way, from the 1950s onwards, to a more privatized leisure existence for men, although no less commercially influenced for all that. Developments in housing (from terraced houses to high rise flats and now back again) and in geographical mobility for job reasons, leaving relatives behind, have helped this privatization. Paradoxically, despite the processes of privatization, the state has also in the twentieth century taken an increasing interest in leisure – whether in controlling the sale of alcohol, regulating the behaviour of football fans, deciding the size of the TV licence fee, building leisure centres, or encouraging people to participate in sport (especially if they happen to be young or unemployed). Neither work nor leisure then has remained static, so our themes are very much in a process of continual change.

Activity

Try to find someone, a neighbour or relative perhaps, who is over 70 or at least an OAP and talk to them about their own memories of work and leisure in the 1930s, the war, and the 1950s. If you have access to a tape-recorder ask them if you can tape what they say – other students might find it of interest too and it will be easier to talk than if you have to keep breaking off to make notes. Afterwards try to list the changes and differences in leisure and work as they remember them, compared to the present day.

Perspective on work and leisure

Although I will not be spending much time talking about perspectives in this book, it is worthwhile just to look briefly at the main perspectives on work and leisure because these highlight different aspects of the issues which are being addressed here. Now there are of course different ways of doing this. Parker’s (1983) wellknown text on work and leisure simply divides theorists into segmentalists, who see people’s lives as being split into different compartments, each of which operates more or less independently of the others, and holists who perceive society as an integrated whole, where for example leisure and work affect each other and every other sphere of social activity. However, this simple dichotomy actually masks quite complicated theoretical differences, because taking a segmentalist view of leisure does not necessarily mean someone has a segmented perspective on social life as a whole. A more useful way of dividing the perspectives is to do so in the same way as theories are categorized in the discipline as a whole, in the following way.

Functionalist perspectives

This view is close to what Parker calls a holist view, seeing leisure and work as interlocking parts of the social system, each one necessary for the functioning of the whole. Dumazdier (1974) is an example of this approach, with leisure being seen as a way of enabling people to adjust to their social situation without threatening social stability and work as necessary to the smooth functioning of the social system. Conflict is perceived as dysfunctional, so for example people who stayed away from work to play golf or go to the seaside would be considered deviant. Leisure is a means of recuperating from work rather than an alternative to it, except where there is temporary instability (for example in the economic system, leading to unemployment) when it may be used as a work substitute to prevent social unrest.

Pluralist perspectives

Some sociology textbooks suggest, wrongly in my view, that pluralist perspectives are confined to theories about the nature and distribution of power in Western democracies, taking as their main stance the notion of dispersal of power into a large number of different interest groups. Such theories are not however confined to attempts to explain the political system but can also be extended to cover a range of social theorists, including those who write about leisure and work. Both Parker (1983) and Roberts (1983, 1981) are pluralists who see the explanation of leisure and work patterns lying in a considerable number of factors or variables, with no one factor taking priority. Thus Parker, after elaborating the segmentalist and holist approaches outlined previously, then says, ‘Both segmentalism and holism appear to be valid to some extent’! Roberts (1981), whilst accepting, for instance that contemporary leisure has in part been shaped by industrialism, rejects the notion that class now plays a major explanatory role and runs through a long list of factors which are thought to influence leisure in some way. There is of course nothing intrinsically wrong with a pluralist approach and many more writers than admit to it actually adopt one, particularly if they are writing about a piece of empirical research. But there is sometimes a lack of a critical explanatory edge. These are adopted by writers who are particularly concerned to explore the ways in which work, leisure, and sport have become rationalized and bureaucratized over periods of industrialization. So for example Elias and Dunning (1969) suggest that since medieval times leisure pursuits have become increasingly rule-bound (for example football was once an extremely rough game played by whole villages, bearing little resemblance to the modern game) just as work has also become increasingly organized and bureaucratized as part of what they call the ‘civilizing process’. This civilizing process has decreased the role of instincts and emotions in human behaviour, although in leisure some aspects of emotions and excitement are retained, in a way which differentiates from work. Later work by Dunning and Sheard (1969) on the development of rugby football looks at the role of sport in controlling violence, as well as exploring further processes of democratization and bureaucratization as they have occurred in sporting activities.

Marxist perspectives

Marxist explanations of the relationship between work and leisure have focused on the role of class relations and the mode of production in shaping leisure and work. Clarke, Critcher, and Johnson (1979) explore leisure as an important part of working-class culture which has been struggled over by industrial workers trying to wrest free time from the owners of the means of production. Although the possibility that employers and the state use leisure as a means of social control is not discounted, leisure is also seen as a way in which the working class can retain some measure of autonomy in a way not possible when they are selling their labour power. Burns (1973), whose essay on the history of leisure in industrial societies was referred to earlier, also has a Marxist perspective on work and leisure. The major feature of the perspectives already discussed, with the possible exception of pluralism, is that they refer to work as paid employment and that in the main the individuals or groups to which they refer are males. Whilst class features in more than one perspective, gender (and still less race) scarcely gets a mention. A massive literature has grown up over the last two decades documenting the differences between the lives of women as compared with men, although it is only very recently that this literature has encompassed leisure. Although some male theorists are now beginning to acknowledge the importance of unpaid work alongside employment, the full significance of this has yet to become evident in analyses of leisure. Remind yourself at this point of Roberts’ (1983) definition of leisure which we used earlier (p. 4). Two of his three elements are time free from obligations and activity marked by different rules, time, and place as play rather than work. For all those women, the majority, who have responsibility for housework and childcare, and also a job, time free from obligations and activities in a way which meets Roberts’ criteria is very rare indeed. In my study of women’s leisure in Milton Keynes I found only single childless women living alone enjoyed much leisure as defined by Roberts (Deem 1986). Other women combined leisure with domestic responsibilities, gained vicarious enjoyment through their children, and saw such activities as ‘taking a nap’ as the height of leisure. Feminist perspectives then, whilst not discounting factors like class, see gender relations between women and men in which men assume dominance as having a crucial role in explaining distinctive patterns of female employment, unpaid work, and leisure. Pluralist and Marxist perspectives can incorporate a gender dimension but differ in not giving it prior explanatory importance.

Looking at different perspectives is helpful for what it tells us about current and past debates concerning work and leisure. It is not however particularly useful to use these perspectives to pigeonhole every piece o...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgments
• 1: Introducing work and leisure
• 2: Work in the formal economy
• 3: The hidden economy and unpaid work
• 4: Unemployment
• 5: Leisure
• 6: Change: work, unemployment, and leisure
• References