Capitalism and Leisure Theory (Routledge Revivals)

Chris Rojek

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415734608
• eBook ISBN: 9781317821205
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Sociología

First published in 1985, this title explores theories of leisure in a capitalist society. Basing his argument on a refutation of the conventional association of leisure with freedom and free time, Chris Rojek examines the four main structural characteristics of modern leisure practice: privatisation, individuation, commercialisation and pacification. The writings of Marx, Durkheim, Weber, and Freud are used to locate the question of leisure in more mainstream social theory. This interesting reissue will be of particular value to students of sociology and leisure studies, and those with an interest in the relationship between leisure and power.

PART ONE

LEISURE TODAY AND THE SUBMERGED TRADITION IN LEISURE THEORY

1 THE STRUCTURAL CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN LEISURE PRACTICE

In this chapter I set forth a position on the structural characteristics of modern leisure practice which informs the whole of the remainder of the book. The aim is to provide the historical and structural context for situating the various rival theories of leisure that I shall consider later. The chapter is divided into four sections. In the first section I argue that we need to depart, once and for all, from the convention of associating ‘free time’ with leisure experience. Indeed I shall submit that the concept of free time has no intrinsic meaning. Rather, its meaning always depends on the social context in which it occurs. The case of women and leisure is given as an example of the problems involved in trying to use the concept. In the second section I shall examine the main organizational features of leisure in capitalist society. In the third, I shall consider the importance of a historical dimension in sociological inquiry into leisure practice. Finally, I shall critically evaluate attempts to anchor the sociology of leisure around a single, unified problematic: the problematic of class.

Leisure and Free Time

The saying that work for some is leisure for others is not only a popular truism, it is also a vital analytical insight. In fact, it accounts for the great difficulty that sociologists of leisure have traditionally encountered in trying to define the field. As Van Moorst (1982: 158) notes, the overwhelming majority of sociological definitions equate leisure with free time. Thus free-time experience is juxtaposed with time which is functionally obligated in some recognizable sense. Vickerman’s definition can serve for illustrative purposes: he obeys the above-mentioned convention by inviting us to ‘take leisure time to be roughly equivalent to free time, that time left over after meeting commitments to work and such essential human capital maintenance as sleeping, eating and personal hygiene’ (Vickerman 1980: 192).

Prima facie, this definition possesses three important virtues: it is precise, it is value free (Vickerman uses not subjective, but apparently ‘objective’, criteria to distinguish leisure behaviour), and it can be operationalized in research. Vickerman himself uses it to report that:

(1) Between 1950 and 1980 the average working week for UK manual workers declined from between 45 and 50 hours with one or two weeks’ annual paid holiday, to between 35 and 40 hours with at least three weeks’ annual paid holiday.

(2) Between 1970 and 1977 UK expenditure on leisure rose by 3.6 per cent. Over the same period, expenditure on alcohol went up by 4.3 per cent; on television, radio, and audio equipment (the second largest category after alcohol), the increase was 9.5 per cent; and expenditure on sport and recreation went up by 8 per cent. All figures are expressed in real terms.

These findings are far from unique. Using a similar working definition of leisure, Martin and Mason (1982) present a host of detailed statistical correlations in long-term trends in work and leisure which they offer as a guide to public discussion and state policy formation.¹ In particular, they stress the increasing significance of leisure in the UK economy, and the redistribution of the national time budget away from work to leisure. Thus they report that in 1981 one-third of all UK consumer spending was on ‘leisure related’ goods and services. In the same year it was estimated that work took up 10 per cent of the total of all UK people’s time; the time devoted to leisure was three times as great (Martin and Mason 1982: 230, 44).

Trend indicators and social-survey methods play an indispensable role in social analysis. They produce information about statistical regularities relating to the composition, incidence, and development of social relations which could not be achieved by any other means. In principle, this is not in dispute. What is in dispute is their value as the central plank of theory and policy. Let us consider the enumerated findings in more detail. In particular, I want to focus on their alleged precision, objectivity, and operational research value. To begin with, doubts can be raised about the precision of these findings. The information on the rise in leisure expenditure and the shift in the UK time budget refers to aggregate figures. For example, Martin and Mason (1982: 45) obtain their basic figures on the current UK leisure budget by multiplying the number of hours in a non-leap year (8,760) with the total population of the UK (55.9 million). No convincing attempt is made to relate the distribution of leisure expenditure, or time, to the key variables of capital ownership, occupational status, sex, race, and health. A similar point can be made in respect of the objectivity of the findings. A global picture of leisure which marginalizes the importance of social differences in society is a feeble basis for the development of theory and policy. For example, the finding that the average working week for UK workers declined over the 1950–80 period does not, in itself, support the conclusion that the average amount of leisure time has increased. Thus, Gershuny (1978, 1979) has argued that the contraction of the working week is compatible with the growth in the ‘informal economy’ (casual labour and the ‘black’ economy) and the expansion of the ‘household production system’ (cooking, cleaning, home improvements, etc.).² Leisure time is therefore transformed into more work by a dual process. ‘Free time’ is consumed in paid labour activities in the informal economy as a means of increasing personal income; and as the cost of purchased services rises relative to the declining cost of ‘domestic capital goods’, domestic labour takes up more time.³ Gershuny provides evidence that both of these processes have gone hand in hand with the decline in the average working week during the post-war period. My third point relates to the question of operational research value. Findings on leisure trends ultimately depend on how leisure is defined. There are fundamental difficulties here. For example, eating may be defined as an essential item of ‘human capital maintenance’; but it is also exploited and developed as a basic leisure activity by at least one major leisure industry: the hotel and catering industry. Similarly, there are insuperable problems involved in applying ‘free time’ as a coefficient of leisure activity. I want to illustrate these problems by looking more closely at the concept of ‘free time’.

THE PROBLEM OF ‘FREE TIME’: THE CASE OF WOMEN’S LEISURE

One of the recurring themes in this book is that leisure should not be described as free time or freedom, even in metaphorical terms. As Parry and Coalter (1982: 222) point out, there is a good semantic reason for this view. The word leisure derives from the Latin word licere, meaning to be lawful or to be allowed. This implies that leisure activity is not ‘free’ but, on the contrary, subject to some form of constraint. The sociological importance of this lies in the following idea: leisure is not free time, but an effect of systems of legitimation.

Since I shall be taking up the theoretical implications of this idea in the final chapter of this book, I shall not attempt to set out a detailed rationale of it here. However, it might be helpful to illustrate the deficiencies of the concept of free time by considering a specific example. I propose to examine the case of leisure patterns among women. I shall follow the precedent typically observed in the field, and distinguish between their available leisure time and leisure space. In respect of both leisure time and space I will argue that women are seriously disadvantaged in comparison with men.

There is no great problem about the calibration of time between the sexes. Sixty minutes for a man is sixty minutes for a woman, a day is a day, a week is a week, a year is a year, etc. But calibration tells us nothing whatsoever about the quality of life experience in leisure time. All of the evidence suggests that women’s experience of leisure is significantly different from men’s.

Barrett and McIntosh (1982), in their book on the family, show that the adult-life options consecrated for young females in family socialization patterns are hemmed in and curtailed by sexism. Thus, the sine qua non of being a fully developed woman in capitalist society is having a family and being a good wife and mother. This is the ‘real work’ for women. It has devastating effects on the way women relate to men, their future, and their general position on the labour market. As Barrett and McIntosh explain:

‘For a girl, the need to marry is … often the chief thing she looks forward to in the future. It will alter her whole life much more than it will her husband’s life. Realistically, her chances of earning good money are low, and marriage and dependence on a husband to supplement her income offer a better standard of living and more security than she could expect if she was single. So, early in life the girl feels she must regulate her sexual behaviour to serve this goal. The danger of being labelled a slag is the danger of not being taken seriously as a partner.’

(Barrett and McIntosh 1982: 75)

The interest which girls show in make-up, hairstyles, dress, and jewellery is often scorned by their male counterparts as a ‘waste of time’. However, viewed in terms of their adult career expectancies it can be interpreted as the essential prerequisite for attracting and keeping ‘the right man’ (see Griffin et al. 1982: 107).

Oakley’s (1974a/b) study of housewives with young children provides an insight into the specific constraints that impinge upon women’s leisure time in the early years of married life. The most obvious of these relates to domestic management and childcare. The women in Oakley’s sample worked on average seventy-seven hours per week on household tasks including shopping and child-care. Moreover, this is only a notional figure since it is much harder to separate non-waged work from leisure than it is to separate waged work from leisure. Oakley suggests that the roles of good wife and mother exert an invasive influence over the spare-time activities of women. For husbands and fathers, leisure time is one of the main pay-offs of regular work. In contrast, for wives and mothers who are involved in household management and child-care, finding time to participate in leisure outside the home is a major preoccupation and popular fantasy.

In their study of leisure behaviour among young, working-class mothers Griffin et al. (1982: 111–12) found that the overwhelming majority were habituated, albeit reluctantly, to staying at home. Domiciled leisure, usually in the form of watching television, was almost universally accepted as part of the price to be paid for being a good homemaker. The women in their sample did not have a real notion of ‘time off’. They had a self-image of being, at all times of the day, at the beck and call of their spouse and children. The time constraint that women experience in their leisure is fully reflected in the physical space which is allocated to them for leisure. There has not been much research into this matter. But what does exist suggests that if the home is now the major site for leisure experience, it is territory where private space for women is at a premium. As the authors of one study put it, ‘characteristically, bathrooms are the only women-only spaces in our society. Male bars or clubs, football matches and the night out with the lads which cannot be interrupted – even the streets to hang around at night – have no female equivalents’ (Griffin et al. 1982: 104).⁴

The conclusion that derives from these data is as follows. At every stage in the life cycle, the leisure time and space of females is obstructed by constraints that do not intrude so insistently upon the leisure preserves of men. Women’s leisure experience is dominated by the consciousness that they are on display as potential life mates or as the ‘better halves’ of their husbands or boyfriends. This is reflected in the things that they spend their disposable income on, the way they dress, their manner in public, and their conversation. Their consciousness of the need to maintain and reproduce a feminine persona in public is also continuously accentuated by capitalist industry through its representatives in advertising, fashion, and women’s magazines.

The case of women reveals the limitations inherent in the concept of free time as the basis for leisure theory and research. The leisure or ‘free’ time of women is conditioned by their position in a male-dominated society. The housewife can have time off only when her household duties have been satisfactorily fulfilled. Even then, she is subject to the ethos of sexism which supports some female activities and dismisses others. For example, it may be legitimate for women to devote their leisure time to playing bingo, but it is ‘unfeminine’ to drink excessively in public. Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule. We are referring here to the basic structural characteristics of leisure relations in capitalist society. It is in this general context that statements on the ‘free’ time of women should be compared, tested, and shredded.

The Organization of Leisure in Modern Capitalism

Throughout this book I shall exploit and develop two minimal methodological positions. First, it is fundamentally wrong to study leisure as an immediately given datum of human experience. Leisure shapes, and is shaped by, history and the interplay of social interests. Second, all views of leisure which devote themselves to uncovering universal laws which enshrine timeless qualities of leisure behaviour must be abandoned. Leisure practice must be thought of in terms of dynamic relations, i.e. relations that change over time.

The stress on process and change can easily lead to the conclusion that leisure relations are all too dynamic: they can never be pinned down. Accordingly, the purpose of this section is to forestall such a construction by itemizing the deep-rooted historical tendencies which give contemporary leisure relations their specific organizational form. I believe that four key tendencies should be differentiated: privatization, individuation, commercialization, and pacification. Let us consider them in turn.

PRIVATIZATION

The home is now the major site of leisure experience in capitalist society. The main catalyst behind this process has been the mass production of cheap home entertainments in the shape of television, radio, audio, and video equipment. If one looks closely at the design and marketing trends in these entertainment forms, two things rapidly become apparent. First, there has been a persistent tendency to miniaturize the unit size of equipment. Second, and at the same time, there has been a tendency to design units where entertainment functions are combined, e.g. music centres, radio cassette receivers, personal stereo equipment, etc. The microchip has revolutionized the scope available to producers and designers for accelerating these tendencies. Nowhere is progress more evident than in the case of television. Small, compact sets are now widely available. They combine a number of leisure functions. For example, they can be used to: (a) receive commercial and public service broadcasts, (b) process information via the various teletext systems, (c) play back videorecordings, (d) receive cable transmissions, and (e) act as monitors for computer packages. One corollary of privatization is the increased capital intensity of leisure activity. I shall return to this point when I consider commercialization and leisure.

INDIVIDUATION

Individuation refers to the historical and material processes which demarcate the individual as a specific person who is publicly recognized as separate and distinct from others. Forms of individuation include name, date of birth, nationality, marital status, home address, national insurance number, club membership, and academic qualifications. The groundwork of the individuated personality is laid in the socialization process which begins in the family and the school. The registration of birth, christening, school registers, and school reports are, inter alia, devices for differentiating individuals and ‘distilling’ their essence in standardized systems of retrievable information. Turner (1983: 163) has commented on the double-edged character of individuation. ‘By making people different and separate,’ he writes, ‘it makes them more subject to control.’ How is individuation expressed in modern leisure relations? Two related points need to be made. First, the specialization and differentiation of persons find a corresponding reference point in the specialization and differentiation of leisure pursuits. The institutionalization of leisure, in the shape of members’ rules, newsletters, festivals, and competitions, has extended the power of discipline throughout leisure activities. The individual pays homage to the obligations of his chosen leisure enthusiasm almost as a condition of participation. This is obvious where the voluntary consent of the individual is given to the rules of a particular sport or leisure association. But some authors argue that even in privatized forms of leisure, such as TV watching, the choices that an individual may exercise are very few. For example, Adorno submits that,

‘We are all familiar with the division of television content into various classes, such as light comedy, westerns, mysteries, so-called sophisticated plays and others. These types have been developed into formulas which, to a certain degree, preestablish the attitudinal pattern of the spectator before he is confronted with any specific content and which largely determine the way in which any specific content is being perceived.’

(Adorno 1954: 226)

For Adorno, the individuation of content, which is represented in the enumerated classes of programmes, exploits and develops the individuated attitudes and inclinations of the viewers. In ‘the totally administered society’, the production and scheduling of broadcasts is calculated to achieve a planned response. Perhaps Adorno exaggerates the passivity of viewers. Even so, his work does highlight an important point about individuation and leisure: the leisure industry can manipulate people’s emotions even in contexts where they feel most free, e.g....

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Leisure without Society?
• Part One Leisure Today and the Submerged Tradition in Leisure Theory
• 1 The Structural Characteristics of Modern Leisure Practice
• 2 Leisure and Social Intervention Marx and Durkheim
• 3 Laissez-Faire Leisure Weber and Freud
• Part Two Leisure Theory and Multi-Paradigmatic Rivalry
• 4 Social Formalism and Leisure
• 5 Neo-Marxist Approaches to Leisure
• 6 Leisure, Signification, and Power Barthes and Foucault
• 7 Leisure and Figurational Sociology
• 8 The Sociology of Pleasure
• Notes
• References
• Name Index
• Subject Index