Work and Leisure

16 A. J. Vealfuture, not the past, while for further millions the experience of industrialisationmay be bypassed altogether, with a rapid translation from nonindustrialto post-industrial lifestyles. Leisure, and work, predate theWestern industrial revolution and are at the heart of the development notjust of industrial society but of human culture (Rojek 2000: 115). Manycurrent Western leisure forms, practices and values carry the traces ofpre-industrial, religious and secular traditions (Shivers and deLisle 1997;deLisle 2003).The aim of this chapter is therefore not to engage directly with currentdebates on relationships between work and leisure, but to provide a broadrangingoverview of the history of work as a backdrop to the later chaptersin the book, with their emphasis on contemporary debates concerning workand leisure. In the main it follows a chronological pattern, beginning with anexamination of pre-industrial societies, namely hunter-gatherers, classicalGreece and Rome and the early Christian era. This is followed by considerationof the first 300 or so years of the so-called ‘modern’ era, andthen the contemporary era, or the first two-thirds of the twentieth century.Finally, since much contemporary debate is centred on the recent growthin working hours in some Western countries, there is a brief examinationof trends in working hours since the middle of the nineteenth century.In the beginningIn the Book of Genesis the work of creation takes six days and the Creatorrests on the seventh day. Later in Genesis, when Adam and Eve are expelledfrom the Garden of Eden, in addition to acquiring the knowledge of goodand evil, Adam is condemned to work. He is ‘sent forth from the Garden ofEden to till the land from whence he was taken’ (Genesis 3: 23) and is told: ‘Inthe sweat of thy face shalt though eat bread’ (3: 19). Thus the biblical historians’view was that humankind engaged in work, in the form of tilling theland, from the very earliest times and that such work was to be viewed negativelycompared with the idyllic life in the Garden of Eden. At the time of thewriting of the Book of Genesis, work in Jewish society clearly possessed amoral and cultural significance. Work was seen as a burden and a punishmentfor Adam; indeed, the Hebrew view was that work was imposed on humankind‘to expiate the original sin committed by its forefathers in the earthlyParadise’ (Tilgher 1977: 11).Whether the biblical story is seen as history or as ancient religious metaphor,or both, it illustrates two themes of this chapter: first, that attitudes towork and leisure have been central themes in human cultural developmentsince the earliest times (Veblen, 1899). Second, since two world religions continueto hold the Old Testament to be essentially true, ideas about work andleisure clearly transcend historical eras (deLisle 2003).