Work and Leisure

44 Chas Critcher and Peter BramhamOutside the home, we meet some old friends. Cinema admissions, concentratedamong the young, have doubled since the early 1980s. Library use hasdeclined but museum entrances have increased, except where charges havebeen introduced. Trips out are still for mundane purposes such as eating ordrinking, visiting friends, going shopping or for a walk and pursuing hobbiesand sports. Young men dominate sport, though one-third of them andone-half of their female counterparts take no regular exercise. The youngdrink more alcohol than the old and a substantial minority take illegal drugs.More organised excursions follow a familiar pattern. Visits to historichouses, zoos and theme parks have reached stable levels, with traditionalvenues to the fore. One-quarter of the population now take two or moreholidays a year and one-third at least one, but four-tenths have no holiday atall, a proportion unchanged since the mid-1970s. In short, though new activitieshave been added, the overall patterns are remarkably predictable. Moreleisure is purchased in the market, especially at home. Almost all activitiesshow considerable variation by class, gender and age. Much of leisure, it canbe safely assumed, is still spent in and motivated by the company of others:family, relatives and friends.More recent processes of globalisation should sensitise us to the profoundchanges taking place, particularly in the markets for sports goods, leisurewear, media and catering services. Global firms offer and produce globalconsumer culture, as national and regional markets are developed for theubiquitous icons of Nike, Gap, Disney, Coca Cola and not least McDonald’s.Bauman’s (1992) early work on postmodern change suggests that we nolonger live in the age of the single ‘legislator’ of taste and cultural consumptionbut rather rely on a variety of expert ‘interpreters’ to make sense ofdiversity and difference. The historical project of national elites to act aslegislators of taste becomes less confident and more diffused with the globalisationand commodification of leisure experiences. Prescriptions for rationalrecreation and central government subsidies for legitimate leisure activities –whether in the sport, arts or serious leisure – appear not so muchold-fashioned as irrelevant.Leisure studies has not been blind to this growing commodification andprivatisation of leisure experiences. For example, Rojek (1985) highlightedthese processes, alongside pacification and individualisation, as the key tounderstanding modern leisure. Indeed, during the Thatcher years, New Rightpolicies sought to restructure and dilute the welfare state, specifically tobypass or to redirect the energies of local government. In the 1980s the AuditCommission and Compulsory Competitive Tendering legislation for sportand leisure introduced an entrepreneurial edge to local authority provision.There was increased emphasis on income generation, customer care and qualityassurance, as well as an ideological shift towards an economic rationalefor local government policies. The social rationale of leisure access and communitydevelopment was superseded by investments in tourism, heritage,