Work and Leisure

Chapter 2The devil still makes workChas Critcher and Peter BramhamIntroductionDuring the 1960s, American academics heralded the emergence of postindustrialsocieties, blessed with rapid technological innovations, high ratesof productivity and economic growth. Time devoted to work would decline,career patterns would change and society could look forward to a ‘leisurerevolution’. Future shock became ‘leisure shock’. All societies – capitalist andcommunist, Western and Eastern – would eventually converge around similarmeritocratic occupational structures, identical technological infrastructuresand common lifestyles. A future of leisure seemed inescapable.In Britain, futurology was regarded with more scepticism. Nevertheless,leisure studies emerged in Britain during the 1970s out of a pragmatic alliancebetween policy-makers, leisure managers and academics, all interested inthe increasing economic, social and psychological importance of leisure. Thesociological strand explored the relationship between leisure, paid work andfamily life. Though subsequently challenged by alternative emphases on thesocial divisions of gender, class and ethnicity, the original triumvirateremained constant. Since the mid-1970s, this research agenda has beenincreasingly challenged for at least two reasons. First, British society, alongwith many other capitalist democracies, has undergone significant changes ineach of the key areas of work, family life and leisure. Second, and as aconsequence, new kinds of theorising about society have emerged, withapparently greater claim to explain these new formations than traditionalmodels.This chapter concentrates on the precise nature of changes in work, familyand leisure in Britain since the mid-1970s and how to interpret them. Thepatterns are often complex. In work there have been severe economic recessionsand mass unemployment, as well as periods of near full employment.The family remains an entrenched ideal but has become so varied that theterm itself no longer seems adequate to encompass the variety of householdformations. In leisure, commercial influences have increased, yet a previouslyimpoverished public and voluntary sector has been given fresh stimulus by