Cultural, societal and technological movements in America defined leisure as we know it today. All facets of life including religion, education and government played a part in shaping modern leisure. Several events in particular played a major role: the philosophical views of ancient Greece, the shifts in religious beliefs during the Protestant Reformation, the major technological advancements of the Industrial Revolution, and the overall rapid growth of society during the early 1900s. Through these events, leisure played drastically different roles but its significance was apparent and we can still feel its influences today.
To gain a better understanding of contemporary leisure, it helps to take a look at its origins during the Classical Period. During this time, Aristotle’s teachings and philosophies were significant in not only defining leisure but also exploring its relationship within society. To better understand leisure we should look more closely at Aristotle’s definition of the word. De Grazia (1962) writes that Aristotle defined leisure as “freedom from the necessity of labor” (p.11). Aristotle believed all labor and occupation was the antithesis of leisure. The Greek translation of leisure is ‘schole.’ It is interesting to note that the Greek translation for work or occupation is ‘ascholia.’ Hence, in the Greek language, the meaning of work was essentially non-leisure. This highlights that central to Greek thought and practice was the idea of leisure and we will explore later how this concept begins to lose itself as work and society shifts.
De Grazia (1962) expands Aristotle’s definition of leisure to include any ‘activity performed for its own sake or as its own end’ (p.13). In Aristotle’s view, leisure wasn’t...
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...society now classifies leisure as simply ‘free time.’ Time away from work or school, no matter how it is enjoyed, is more broadly defined as leisure today.
Works Cited
• “Child Labor in U.S. History,” Child Labor Public Educstion Project. http://www.continuetolearn.uiowa.edu/laborctr/child_labor/about/us_history.html
• Cross, G (1990). A Social History of Leisure Since 1600. State College, PA: Venture Publishing, Inc.
• De Grazia, S. (1962). Of time, work, and leisure (pp. 9–25). Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.
• “Max Weber.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 15 May. 2014. Web. 19 May. 2014.
• N.d. “The Long History of the Olympic Protests.”
• Rojek, C. (2000). Leisure and the rich today: Veblen’s thesis after a century. Leisure Studies, 19(1), 1–15.
• Rosenberg, Jennifer. ‘The Nickname Tin Lizzie.” History1900s, 15 Aug 2007.
My own personal philosophy of leisure has been shaped by past and present activities I do for leisure and why I do them. To me, leisure is the sense of being free from external stressors that I face in my life such as school or work. The positive outcomes from partaking in leisure are generally overlooked and often underestimated. Leisure affects our emotions, our physical and mental health, and aids in the creation of relationships. In my own personal life, I have done and still participate in leisure as a way to sooth myself or unwind from the stress of school or work. The release of pent up emotions and energy for individuals helps their relationships with others and their overall health as well. When stress is released, an individual is
Marks, L. (2006). The Loss of Leisure in a Culture of Overwork. Spirit of Change Magazine.
Evidence suggests that families often enjoyed everyday leisure but in reality working class social life was divided by gender. Married women’s leisure tended to be separate from the public domain and was not very different from work, but was linked with domestic duties and family relations. It was during this period that to survive families had to send their sons and daughters into the labor force to supplement the earnings of the father, while the mother cooked, cleaned, cared for the children and manufactured goods in the home. The typical wage-earning woman of 1900 was young and single.
“In the last twenty years the amount of time Americans have spent at their jobs has risen steadily. Each year the change is small, amounting to about nine hours, or slightly more than one additional day of work (Schor, 1). Juliet B. Schor’s The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure explores the decline of leisure time in American professionals and laborers as a result of an increase in working time. In comparison to our European counterparts, American workers are now working close to 320 more hours yearly. Schor highlights the fact that American workers are choosing to work multiple jobs contributing to less leisure time due to longer working hours. In conclusion the book depicts the idea that the materialistic nature of Americans results in them choosing to work more so that they can spend more.
The argument that the “Tumult of the Metropolis” creates inner barriers between people is justified by Simmel’s social theory study of sociability (paraphrased in Frisby 1989, p.75-77). His reflective view explores the importance of sociability and its ability to transcend ones inner barriers and concerns on modern leisure within a “growing objective culture” (Frisby 1989, p.76). Simmel further suggests that the concerns raised upon the modernised culture derived from two main ideologies of objectification and reification which was dominated by production, exchange and consumption. The domination of these aspects reflects the process of commodification as what was seen as valuable had been reduced to exchangeable prices, therefore meaning that subjectivity and individuality was destroyed.
Many individuals would define leisure as time free from paid work, domestic responsibilities, and just about anything that one would not do as part of their daily routine. Time for leisure and time for work are both two separate spheres. The activities which people choose to do on their spare time benefit their own personal interests as well as their satisfactions. While some people may enjoy one activity, others pay not. Leisure is all about personal interests and what people constitute having a good time is all about. Some may say that the process of working class leisure can be seen to contribute their own subordination as well as the reproduction of capitalist class relations. Self-produced patterns of working class leisure can lead to resistance to such reproduction. This leads to social class relations and inequalities, and the fact that it they can never be completely reproduced in the leisure sphere. This film Home Feeling: Struggle for a Community, gives some examples of the role of leisure within a capitalist society dealing with issues such as class inequalities, and how they are different among various societies.
The purpose of therapeutic recreation is to enable all individuals to achieve quality of life and optimal health through meaningful experiences in recreation and leisure. In this paper the definition of therapeutic recreation will be discussed as well as what should be included in the definition and what should be rejected. This definition will mainly focus on health and use the Health Promotion Model to further explain my choice to focus on health and well-being. I will also be discussing the importance of inclusion in therapeutic recreation for different learning styles in many environments, and the significance of diversity in the community and what we hope to achieve by being fully inclusive.
Written in 1899, by Thorstein Veblen, “The Theory of the Leisure Class”, analyzes and critiques consumerism in the United States. Veblen explores the lifestyle and ways of thinking of the exploiter versus the exploited; in a point of view from those who are born into power and those who serve people in power. It is in this book where Veblen created the phrase “conspicuous consumption”, where it means buying goods in order to display a higher social class than others (Heath, 2001). He traces almost all practices and tastes of the leisure class directly to the pecuniary interest. I chose this book because I wanted to learn about how certain groups in society try to distinguish themselves from other groups and how it came to be for such differential.
The problem of modern leisure has, throughout the years, been a well-discussed topic among many sociologists. Sociability, in this case, is one of the most universal forms of leisure that will be discussed in this essay. The theoretical framework for this discussion is provided by the sociological insights of Georg Simmel (1858-1918) as he argues that the “tumult of the metropolis” (cited in Frisby 1989, p80) creates inner barriers between people and suggests that “sociability” can surpass this problem. According to Frisby (1989), Simmel states that the city life has transformed the struggle with nature for livelihood into a struggle with other human beings for gain. This is further discussed as Frisby (1989) and Giulianotti (2005) describes how sociability can transcend this problem according to Simmel’s sociability theory.
However, this way of life does have a wide influence, whether slaves or upper class aristocracy are "bored." Aristotle is not against pleasure, but he is not considered the pursuit of physical pleasure is necessary because the flesh is happy indulgence joy. Indulgence is excessive or too much thencannot be called good, but rather may be referred to it as an evil. Second, the status of highlight: the pursuit of honor lifestyle Aristotle believed that the nature of those activities and preferences noble people choose honor, because people in general really can honor called target political life.
In this industry society has seen technological developments along side the changing consumer needs over the past forty years to produce today's huge consumer needs demands for leisure and recreation products and services. However in the 1940's people were restricted to what was available due to the war so people just undertook home based leisure activities such as reading play games listening to the radio at this time all of these activities where very popular, after the war the leisure industry began to develop. Another factor that took a toll on the industry was that people were restricted to what they could do in their leisure time. - Not many people had personal transport - Cleaning the house took longer which consumed up more time - People were limited to holidays and free time - Not many people could afford to spend their income on leisure However 50 years later there have been some major changes in the way
Aristotle once stated that, “But if happiness be the exercise of virtue, it is reasonable to suppose that it will be the exercise of the highest virtue; and that will be the virtue or excellence of the best part of us.” (481) It is through Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics that we are able to gain insight into ancient Greece’s moral and ethical thoughts. Aristotle argues his theory on what happiness and virtue are and how man should achieve them.
However, we can wonder if the pleasures that derive from necessary natural desires are what actually brings us happiness, since having a family, friends, a good job and doing fun things seem to bring the most joy in life. Plato’s ideas on life are even more radical, since he claims that we should completely take difference from our bodily needs. Therefore it seems that we should only do what is necessary for us to stay a life and solely focus on the mind. Although both ways of dealing with (bodily)pleasure are quite radical and almost impossible to achieve, it does questions if current perceptions of ‘living the good life’ actually leads to what we are trying to achieve, which is commonly described as
time to engage in leisure activities such as entertainment and food as well as socializing. Consumers
Aristotle describes three types of life in his search for human flourishing: lives of gratification, politics, and contemplation. He contends that there is a single Idea of Good that all men seek, and he finds that happiness, or eudaimonia, best fits his criteria. Aristotle investigates the human purpose to find how happiness is best achieved, and finds that a life of activity and contemplation satisfies our purpose, achieving the most complete happiness in us. Aristotle is correct regarding the necessity of activity, but restricts the theory to only the life of study. We will reject this restriction, and instead allow any life of virtue and productivity to substitute for Aristotle’s life of study. One primary means of remaining active to achieve happiness includes loving friendships, which only happen to the virtuous. Thus human flourishing is living a life of virtue, activity, and productivity.