Abstract
The social analysis of ‘leisure’ is not well developed. In part this reflects the area’s marginal status for sociology and Marxism, but this underdevelopment is also due to the failure of those who have been busy in the field to break out. Rather they seem to have been content to clear their own ground and map out the terrain, creating a fraternity of ‘leisure studies’.1 Recently, this contented community has been blasted by loud criticisms.2 Van Moorst, for example, argues that:
Theories of leisure have been dogged by three major problems: a series of superficial concepts and spurious distinctions … a preoccupation with a desire to plan leisure… and, thirdly, partly as a result of these an inadequate theoretical base most frequently stemming from a functionalist framework.3
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Notes
H. van Moorst (1982) ‘Leisure and Social Theory’, Leisure Studies, 157–69.
J. Clarke and C. Critcher (1985) The Devil Makes Work: Leisure in Capitalist Britain, London, Macmillan
C. Rojek (1985) Capitalism and Leisure Theory, London, Tavistock
R. Deem (1986) All Work and No Play?, Milton Keynes, Open University.
So leisure studies make few if any references to the influential typology of value systems and social sources contained in F. Parkin (1971) Class Inequality and Political Order, London, MacGibbon & Kee,
even though this was published in the same sociology series as S. Parker (1971) The Future of Work and Leisure, London, MacGibbon & Kee, a basic text of leisure studies.
S. Parker (1976) The Sociology of Leisure, London, George Allen & Unwin, p. 48–9.
K. Roberts (1978) Contemporary Society and the Growth of Leisure, London, Longman, p. 3.
J. Kelly (1983) Leisure Identities and Interactions, London, George Allen & Unwin, p. 5.
S. Parker (1971), S. Parker (1976) and S. Parker (1983) Leisure and Work, London, George Allen & Unwin.
See H. F Moorhouse (1987) ‘The ‘Work’ Ethic and ‘Leisure’ Activity’ in P. Joyce (ed.) The Historical Meanings of Work, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
E. Batstone, I. Boraston and S. Frenkel (1977) Shop Stewards in Action, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, pp. 127–8.
J. H. Goldthorpe (1966) ‘Attitudes and Behaviour of Car Assembly Workers’, British Journal of Sociology XVII, pp. 227–44
D. Roy (1959–60) ‘Banana Time: Job Satisfaction and Informal Interaction’ Human Organization XVIII, pp. 158–168
and (1974) ‘Sex in the Factory: Informal Heterosexual Relations between Supervisors and Workgroups’ in C. Bryant (ed.) Deviant Behavior, Chicago, Rand McNally
E. Chinoy (1955) Automobile Workers and the American Dream, Boston, Beacon
H. F. Moorhouse (1983) ‘American Automobiles and Worker’s Dreams’, Sociological Review XXXI, pp. 403–26.
S. Parker (1981) ‘Change, Flexibility, Spontaneity, and Self-Determination in Leisure’, Social Forces LX, p. 327.
C. Cockburn (1983) Brothers, Male Dominance and Technological Change, London, Pluto, is a good starting point for the issues here.
K. Kusterer (1978) Know How On the Job: the Important Working Knowledge of ‘Unskilled’ Workers, Boulder, Colorado, Westview, is an excellent and neglected study of this point.
J. H. Goldthorpe et al. (1969) The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 179–87.
E.g. B. Roberts et al. (eds.) (1985) New Approaches to Economic Life, Manchester, Manchester University Press
R. Pahl (1984) Divisions of Labour, Oxford, Blackwell.
M. Weber (1948) ‘Class, Status and Party’ in H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds.) From Max Weber, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, pp. 180–95.
M. Sobel (1981) Lifestyle and Social Structure, New York, Academic Press, p. 2.
J. Barbalet (1986) ‘The Limitation of Class Theory and the Disappearance of Status’, Sociology XX, pp. 557–75, and
R. Crompton (1987) ‘Gender Status and Professionalism’, Sociology XXI, pp. 413–28.
T. Burns (1966) ‘The Study of Consumer Behaviour, A Sociological View’, Archives Européennes de Sociologie VII, pp. 313–29.
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© 1989 Chris Rojek
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Moorhouse, H.F. (1989). Models of Work, Models of Leisure. In: Rojek, C. (eds) Leisure for Leisure. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19527-5_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19527-5_2
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