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and 1970s. He conceived leisure as a restricted set
of activities that required two social preconditions.
The first precondition was that society had to be
sufficiently advanced so that most social activities
are personally selected by individuals, rather than
imposed by tradition or ritual. The second was that
the economic activities that provided livelihoods
were essentially arbitrary or synthetic rather than
natural. In other words, leisure was a function of an
industrial or post-industrial society.
Further, Dumazdier felt that leisure implied four
personal conditions. First, leisure activities were
free of commitments to work, school or religion.
In other words, leisure was an expression of
perceived freedom. Second, leisure was `disinterested'
in the sense that activities were engaged in
for intrinsic motivation, rather than material or
social gain. Third, leisure is pleasurable, and
fourth, leisure must fulfil the need for rest,
entertainment and self-transcendence. Other
authors advocated the `state of mind' interpretation
of leisure �as opposed to a `free time' interpretation)
even further. One of the best known and perhaps
most extreme views is that of de Grazia, who
wrote, `it [leisure] is an ideal, a state of being, a
condition of man, which few desire and fewer
achieve' �1962: 5).
While both `leisure as free time' and `leisure as a
state of being' conceptualisations have advantages,
each also has limitations. The `free time' view must
wrestle with operational questions about what
constitutes free time. For example, is time spent
in childcare or in religious observances `free time'?
Further, this view largely ignores the social and
psychological dimensions of leisure as a human
experience. On the other hand, the `state of
being' view presents leisure as a phenomenon that
can be so difficult to operationalise with simple
empirical tools that the concept has very limited
utility in policy or management contexts. In
recent decades, social and psychological researchers
have refined a number of approaches in the
empirical study of leisure. One of these is studying
people from many walks of life through carefully
structured interviews or time budget diaries, and
determining the circumstances in which they feel at
leisure. Laboratory studies have also been conducted
in which the researcher attempts to induce
feelings of leisure in the experimental subjects.
leisure 355
Modern scientific approaches to defining leisure
can be classified according to two criteria �Mannell
and Kleiber 1997). The first is the type of
phenomenon taken as an indicator of the occurrence
of leisure. Two types of phenomena are used:
objective and subjective �Neulinger 1974; Lawton
1993). Objective phenomena equate leisure with
participation in certain types of activity such as
doing a crossword puzzle. Leisure may also be
defined in terms of the setting: tennis courts,
beaches or theatres are likely to be correlated with
feelings of leisure. The subjective approach interprets
leisure as a mental state. This requires that
researchers be able to measure satisfactions, meanings,
moods and cognitions associated with leisure.
While these can sometimes be inferred from the
observation of behaviour, they are more likely to
be recorded through interviews.
Scholarly approaches to defining leisure may
also be classified according to the vantage point
adopted by the researcher. In other words,
regardless of whether the researcher is using
objective or subjective indicators, leisure may be
defined in terms of what the researcher views it to
be �an external vantage point) or that of the person
being studied �an internal vantage point). External
definitions are based on what people in a social
group agree constitutes leisure. The researcher
predetermines what is leisure for the people being
studied based on knowledge of the group to which
the people being studied belong.
From an internal vantage point, the researcher
defines leisure based on whether the behaviour,
setting, or experience is described as leisure by the
person being studied. In other words, the researcher
allows the subject to determine whether a
given activity, setting or experience is leisure. By
using the subject's own definition, some researchers
believe they can achieve a more accurate picture of
what leisure is and what it means. Personal
definitions are influenced by the values and beliefs
of the group to which the individual belongs.
Externally and internally based definitions of
leisure can agree, but they are often at odds. These
various approaches ± objective versus subjective
criteria and external versus internal vantage points
± all offer legitimate insights. Answering questions
about leisure typically requires a combination of
these approaches, and tourism connects and has