Work and Leisure

The devil still makes work 49the purpose of understanding any particular element of the social orderis to connect – to understand the ways in which one particular element isshaped by other structures and ways in which that one area affects andcontributes to the development of the rest.(Clarke and Critcher 1985: xiii, original emphasis)It remains our view, despite all the genuine difficulties it entails, that Britishsociety is still basically a capitalist one. Since capitalism is a dynamic system ithas changed but not in its fundamentals.Changes, when set against the basic rules of capitalist accumulation,appear more as shifts in the surface appearance rather than theemergence of some new kind of entirely new postcapitalist or evenpostindustrial society.(Harvey 1989: vii)This does not mean that changes in family life, leisure or even work cansimply be ‘read off’ as inevitably and invariably capitalist. The challenge is todemonstrate, not that a theory can immediately and thoroughly explaineverything but that it can account in broad terms for the major features ofthe phenomenon under discussion, in this case the sweep of social changerecently undergone by British society. Despite all the real changes, especiallyin the cultural and leisure industries, the basic contours of daily life – ofwork, family and leisure – have remained remarkably recognisable. The effortto understand the connections between them continues.ReferencesBauman, Z. (1992) Intimations of Post-Modernity. London: Routledge.Bauman, Z. (1998) Globalization. Cambridge: Polity.Beck, U. (1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, trans. M. Ritter. London:Sage.Clarke, J. and Critcher, C. (1985) The Devil Makes Work: Leisure in Capitalist Britain.London: Macmillan.Coalter, F. (1997) Leisure sciences and leisure studies: different concept, same crisis?Leisure Sciences 19: 255–68.Coalter, F. (1998) Leisure studies, leisure policy and social citizenship: the failure ofwelfare or the limits of welfare? Leisure Studies 17: 21–36.Crook, I. (1991) Postmodernisation. London: Routledge.Featherstone, M. (1991) Consumer Culture and Postmodernism. London: Sage.Finnegan, R. (1981) Celebrating Christmas, Unit 2, Popular Culture, Themes andIssues. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.Giddens, A. (1999) Runaway World: Reith Lectures. London: BBC.Harvey, D. (1989) The Condition of Postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell.Hutton, W. (1995) The State We’re In. London: Jonathan Cape.