Leisure
Leisure, or free time, is time spent away from business, work, and domestic chores. It also excludes time spent on necessary activities such as eating, sleeping and, where it is compulsory, education.
The distinction between leisure and unavoidable activities is not a rigidly defined one, e.g. people sometimes do work-oriented tasks for pleasure as well as for long-term utility.[1] A distinction may also be drawn between free time and leisure. For example, Situationist International maintains that free time is illusory and rarely free; economic and social forces appropriate free time from the individual and sell it back to them[clarification needed] as the commodity known as "leisure".[2] Certainly most people's leisure activities are not a completely free choice, and may be constrained by social pressures, e.g. people may be coerced into spending time gardening by the need to keep up with the standard of neighbouring gardens.
Leisure studies is the academic discipline concerned with the study and analysis of leisure.
Cultural differences
Time available for leisure varies from one society to the next, although anthropologists have found that hunter-gatherers tend to have significantly more leisure time than people in more complex societies. As a result, band societies such as the Shoshone of the Great Basin came across as extraordinarily lazy to European colonialists.[3]
Workaholics are those who work compulsively at the expense of other activities. They prefer to work rather than spend time socializing and engaging in other leisure activities.
Men generally have more leisure time than women. In Europe and the United States, adult men usually have between one and nine hours more leisure time than women do each week.[4]
Adolescents
Free time has potential for youth development, which is influenced by parental attitudes of interest and control, mediated by adolescent motivational style.[5]
See also
References
- ^ Goodin, Robert E.; Rice, James Mahmud; Bittman, Michael; & Saunders, Peter. (2005). "The time-pressure illusion: Discretionary time vs free time". Social Indicators Research 73(1), 43–70. (JamesMahmudRice.info, "Time pressure" (PDF))
- ^ Situationist International #9 (1964) "Questionnaire, section 12"
- ^ Farb, Peter (1968). Man's Rise to Civilization As Shown by the Indians of North America from Primeval Times to the Coming of the Industrial State. New York City: E.P. Dutton. p. 28. LCC E77.F36.
Most people assume that the members of the Shoshone band worked ceaselessly in an unremitting search for sustenance. Such a dramatic picture might appear confirmed by an erroneous theory almost everyone recalls from schooldays: A high culture emerges only when the people have the leisure to build pyramids or to create art. The fact is that high civilization is hectic, and that primitive hunters and collectors of wild food, like the Shoshone, are among the most leisured people on earth.
- ^ OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Society at a Glance 2009: OE. See image at dx.doi.org
- ^ Erin Hiley Sharp, Linda L. Caldwell, John W. Graham and Ty A. Ridenour: Individual Motivation and Parental Influence on Adolescents’ Experiences of Interest in Free Time: A Longitudinal Examination, Journal of Youth and Adolescence, Volume 35, Number 3, pp. 340-353, 2006, doi:10.1007/s10964-006-9045-6
Further reading
- Peter Borsay, A History of Leisure: The British Experience since 1500, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, ISBN 0-333-93082-7
- Cross, Gary S. 2004. Encyclopedia of recreation and leisure in America. The Scribner American civilization series. Farmington Hills, Michigan: Charles Scribner's Sons.
- Harris, David. 2005. Key concepts in leisure studies. London: Sage. ISBN 0-7619-7057-6.
- Jenkins, John M., and J.J.J. Pigram. 2003. Encyclopedia of leisure and outdoor recreation. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-25226-1.
- Poser, Stefan: Freizeit und Technik, European History Online, Institute of European History, 2011, retrieved: 1st of March, 2013.
- Rojek, Chris, Susan M. Shaw, and A.J. Veal (Eds.) (2006) A Handbook of Leisure Studies. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-4039-0278-8.
- Huzinga, Johannes. ____. Homo Ludens
- Grudin, Robert. ____. Time and the Art of Living
- Pieper, Josef. ____. Leisure, Basis of Culture
- Poser, Stefan: Leisure Time and Technology, European History Online, Mainz: Institute of European History, 2011, retrieved: October 25, 2011.
- Czikszentmihaly, Mihaly. ____. Flow
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