Introduction to Sociology: Leisure

 

We shall examine three perspectives to leisure. Leisure activities have increased:

- disposable income, reduction in hours worked, paid holidays, the leisure industry, and longer schooling years and retirement age.

There are significant differences in how leisure is consumed by social classes and genders.

 

Neo-Marxism

Neo-Marxists argue that the state and the business community control class behaviour, ensure social cohesion and promote commodification ( i.e., selling entertainment):

a) Leisure is dominated by big business interests:

- commodified fun and entertainment

- the mass market

- a standardised package

b) Leisure is class-based

- social inequalities that limit the poor people’s ability to enjoy life

c) Large corporations influence consumers’ needs:

- create new products and services

- restrict choice and manipulate tastes

d) The state regulates leisure and the public sphere:

- licensing laws

- censorship

- health and safety laws

- policing events

e) The state acts in order to:

- prevent disorderly leisure that threaten social order (e.g., drugs)

- discourage working class leisure

- promote bourgeois tastes and culture

 

Feminism

Feminists argue that leisure reflects underlying male power and control over women’s body and movement.

a) Not only are women more restricted in their leisure pursuits, but they also provide leisure for men. For instance

- undertaking domestic work so that men are free to leave the house;

- many sites (e.g., football stadiums) are unsafe and unattractive to women;

- women are discouraged and made to feel guilty; and

- engage in leisure to please their partners.

b) Women can participate in leisure activities when the following occurs:

- access to private transport

- an independent source of income

- a self-confident approach to life

- a sense of right to have leisure

- a strong social support network

- positive changes in domestic responsibilities

- public policy to provide public transport and childcare facilities

c) leisure reflects physical and cultural surveillance and discipline over women’s time and behaviour:

- physical violence and sexual attacks means that women are afraid to venture alone (e.g., parks and funfairs);

- husbands’ and partners’ disapprovals limit women’s leisure; i.e., motivated by the male need to control women’s sex and body; and

- women tend to accept the patriarchal ideology and monitor their own activities; i.e., respectable behaviour, lady-like manners

 

Post-modernism

Post-modernists argue how leisure connects with lifestyle choices, freedom and playfulness.

a) Individual identities no longer determined by class, gender and ethnicity:

- a post-modern society offers a multiplicity of identities for people to choose from;

- individuals construct their own lifestyles and express their own individuality in leisure and consumption; e.g., clothes, music, food furniture, holidays and sports

b) Consumerism is a vehicle for creative self-expression, symbolic meanings and personal lifestyle, and not about capitalist profit-making.

c) A post-modern leisure have the following features:

- self-indulgence – not control and discipline

- a breakdown of high culture and popular culture – no longer to reason for the superiority and legitimacy of elite tastes

- leisure becomes playful, not a pursuit of self-improvement; a matter of changing lifestyles not long-term commitments;

- work / leisure boundary breaks down – as both fuse into each other;

- the primary of the body and appearances over substance;

- a longing for nostalgia and a desire for invented theme parks