Leisure in Historiography

Abstract

In this chapter, I will explore the theme of leisure in writers from the Early Modern period onwards. The first half of this chapter will juxtapose primary sources such as the work of Milton, Gibbon and Mill with modern historiography of leisure (see, for example, Borsay, 2005), both to examine their ideas about the purpose of leisure and to provide a sustained engagement, following the Habermasian critical lens, with contemporary leisure history. The second half of the chapter will explore modern historiography of leisure in the work of writers such as Dewey, Marx, Weber and Veblen, along with a review of their contemporary critics. In exploring this historiography, the question about the very Modernist ontological nature of leisure (as seen in the work of many leisure sociologists) will be addressed and shown to be epistemologically sufficient, but not necessary, for accounting for the unique nature of the relationship between work and leisure in the modern, Western world. Finally, two examples of twentieth-century leisure will be discussed, to highlight the communicative and instrumental diversity of modern leisure: long-distance walking in England and the invention of world music as a genre of pop music.