Leisure

One calls leisure the activity which one carries out during the time which one can lay out apart from his usual occupations (use, management of the house, education of the children…) and of the constraints which they impose (Transport S for example). It is also qualified spare time .

This spare time is usually devoted to activities primarily nonproductive from a macro-economic point of view, even ludic or cultural: Bricolage, Jardinage, Sport S, Divertissement S… what involved a semantic slip towards this last term, so much so that it created for itself a distinction between the sport and the leisures.

Considering that by adopting as of its first session, in Washington, a Convention over the duration of the work, General conference had in particular as an aim to guarantee to the workers, in addition to the hours of sleep necessary, a sufficient time to make what they like, as indicates it exactly the etymology of the word “leisures” (...) | International Conference of work, Geneva, 1924, p. 644.

Yesterday

Sénèque rents the merits of the otium (the Latin name of the time of leisure) and regards it as the characteristic of the really free man - but by adding that it is good to devote it to a social role or policy in the city. Later, Thomas d' Aquin will praise to him also illicit repairing leisure .

The evangelic injunction: See the lilies of the fields: they do not slip by nor do not bend and yet never Solomon was not vêtu as they in all his glory can possibly be regarded as a call not to lose his life to gain it . Besides corroborating the famous Which the universe is used for the man to gain if it has suddenly lost his heart? (Matthieu, 16,26).

Today

The development of mechanization and computerization gradually releases the man of many arduous physical work, in same time it is true as it charges his mental: residence-work transport, often increased administrative complexity, difficulties related to a bad ergonomics in data processing, nervously arduous work, etc At all events, the working time entered decreases overall, and the Réduction of the working time makes it possible in theory each one to get clear more spare time.

This spare time makes it possible to take part in several activities other than of survival or reproduction , thus to invest themselves in association S, to develop its competences or to carry on a different activity (Peinture, Jardinage, Sport…).

It is difficult to determine if the phenomenon were accompanied or not by a development of the mental Activity. Difficult also to know if does not develop a kind of activism of the leisures which leads us to neutralize ourself in various activities what could have constituted, before mobilization at other ends, a time the leisure. The problem of the lack of time seems thus in increase and not in reduction since the Années 1960, at least in the big cities.

An author as Jeremy Rifkin estimates that we forward ourselves in the long term to a company without work. Before such a situation emerges, if it does it one day, it is necessary to worry about the following points:

  • Work conditions
  • duration of the work, in one year and of many years of the life
  • conditions of Existence and end-of-life of the citizens

This will undoubtedly contribute so that this reduction of volume of work results rather in a Redistribution of the activity, which would make it possible to reduce the working time, instead of resulting in a concentration of the activity, which would produce Chômage.

The philosopher Bertrand Russell tackled this question in two of his works: Tests skeptics and a work of youth, the world which could be , with which it took some distance thereafter.

Leisure and leisures: semantic slip

Word has started to show shift in meaning in years 1960 - 70, undoubtedly following its use repeated in expression “civilization of leisures” (expression that one owes in Joffre Dumazedier in the book of the same name published in 1960), and were used by certain people as synonym of Divertissement , which constitutes an important deviation of significance.

The term industry of the leisures directly echoes this concept of leisure-entertainment, by proposing a vision productivist (mercantile, some say) production of goods and services intended to satisfy the needs for the households related to their time of leisure: one considers here that this time is dedicated to the consumption of mass, to occupy oneself.

Statistics

August 1st

See too

Related articles

Publications

To read in ligne
  • Jean-Marie Lafortune, Introduction to the sociological analyzes of time except work , Presses of the University of Quebec, 2004
To read on line itintroduction (www.puq.ca)

External bonds

* Historic site: Leisures of its time, 1867-1896 (leisures at the end of the XIXe century, www.musee-mccord.qc.ca )
* Site of the time of the leisures, time of the culture: the cultural voyage (www.terreentiere.com)
* Site of the Québécois Observatory of the leisure - sociocultural research on the tendencies of the leisure of Quebec and the rest of the world (www.uqtr.ca)

Simple: Leisure

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