Work and Leisure

Hunter-gatherer societiesHistory of work 17Historical accounts confirm that the negative biblical attitude towards workhas indeed been the norm for most people for most of the time, but anthropologyraises questions about the biblical portrayal of the earliest type ofwork being agricultural. Hunter-gatherer society preceded agrarian society,so agricultural work was not part of earliest human experience, but emergedquite late in the process of human development – perhaps as recently as10,000 to 15,000 years ago.There is debate among anthropologists and leisure theorists as to whetherthe concepts of work and leisure are applicable in hunter-gatherer societiesbecause of the lack of any clear dividing line in such societies between timespent engaging in actual hunting and gathering tasks and time spent in otheractivities. Direct evidence on the nature of the hunter-gatherer way-of-life hasbeen assembled within the past century or so from the declining numbers oftribal groups leading traditional ways of life in areas as diverse as Australia,Papua New Guinea, South America and the Arctic, and efforts have beenmade to construct ‘time-budgets’ for individuals living in such circumstances.If work is activity deemed ‘necessary for survival’ then the acts of huntingand gathering should be considered to be work. Conversely, some of the timeleft over from such activities might plausibly be considered leisure time.Sahlins (1974: 15–20) notes that the number of hours spent in obtaining foodin hunter-gatherer societies was probably little more than between three andfive hours a day for most communities for most of the time and that, even indaylight hours, a great deal of time was spent in ‘resting’. The Australiananthropologist, W. E. H. Stanner (1979), speaking of traditional Aboriginalsocieties contacted in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, notes thatlimited material needs were often met with limited expenditure of time, whichleft free time, energy and enthusiasm to be expended – as they were,without stint – on all the things for which life could be lived when basicneeds had been met: the joys of leisure, rest, song, dance, fellowship,trade, stylized fighting and the performance of religious rituals . . . Thetrue leisure time activities – social entertaining, great ceremonial gatherings,even much of the ritual and artistic life – impressed observers fromthe beginning.(Stanner 1979: 162, 38)As Rojek (2000: 115) puts it: ‘Human culture did not begin with the need towork, it began with language, dancing, laughing, acting, mimicking, ritualand a variety of play forms’. In a functionalist sense, the evolution of suchactivities can be seen as an early solution to the ‘problem of leisure’.In contemporary Western society the balance between work and leisure is,and has been at least since the Enlightenment, considered an earnest matter