Leisure, consumption and identity

• Postmodern view of leisure

  • Rojek - modernist view of leisure is that work and leisure contrast but come together with postmodernity
  • Leisure is less planned and purposeful in a postmodern society. People's leisure choices are less shaped by their position in society in terms of class, age or gender
  • Society has become more pluralistic and less rigid surrounding who can adopt certain identities
  • In modern societies leisure reflects who you are whereas in postmodern societies, leisure increasingly creates your identity
• Leisure, consumption and identity

  • Bocock - peoples consumer choices are important aspects in defining their identities and the image they wish to project to others. People are essentially 'shopping' for lifestyles
  • Postmodernists suggest that advertising for consumer products have symbolic significance
  • Taylor - society is transformed into something 'resembling an endless shopping mall where people have more choice'
  • Similar to Giddens and the reflexive self
• Occupation and work experience

  • Parker - people's occupations such as the amount of independence and satisfaction that they have, have important influences on their leisure
  • Three patterns in relationships between work and leisure
  • Opposition - physically hard and male dominating, mining and steelworks, leisure is a central life interest and a sharp contrast to work
  • Neutrality - boring and routine work, routine clerical workers, leisure is relaxation at home with family
  • Extension - work with high levels of commitment, doctors and teachers, leisure is work related eg. work chats over dinner
• Criticisms of Parker

  • Overemphasises the importance of work in shaping leisure activities - cannot link those who are retired, unemployed or those in full time education
  • Pluralists - too deterministic as Roberts found that some leisure pursuits are common to all people such as watching TV
  • Parker's research is primarily focused on men in full time employment and does to account for how gender plays a part in leisure choices
• Social class

  • Scaton and Bramham - the postmodernist view argue that the free choice of leisure such as shopping ignores the fact that they are limited to the most well-off in society
  • Bauman and May - choice takes place in a society in which resources are unequally distributed
  • Taste is influenced by cultural capital
• Bauman's consumer groups

  • The seduced - those who are financially secure, in well-paid regular work, knowledgeable about consumption and regularly take part in it. Seduced by consumerism and are seen as attractive customers by companies
  • The repressed - limited ability to shop and consume. Low income or lack knowledge on what to buy, the real victims of a consumer society as they have a devalued identity and cannot be accepted by peer groups. Young people may not be able to afford an up-to-date phone and may be excluded from certain youth cultures
• Age

  • Leisure of young single people tends to be spent outside the home in peer groups. They may gain some economic independence from wages or benefits but lack the financial commitments and responsibilities of household bills, children and a mortgage
  • Young people are more leisure centred than other people except the retired
  • More likely to have the opportunities of forming their identities through consumer lifestyles and leisure
• Family life cycle

  • Young couples face restrictions on leisure with mortgages and costs of children
  • As children become less dependent on their parents and mortgages are paid off people have more disposable income to spend on consumer goods
  • As people reach an elderly age, reduced income in retirement may once again, limit leisure
• Gender

  • Leisure activities associated with gender
  • Example - shopping
  • Men view shopping as a chore and a necessary way of obtaining things that they need but for women it is an enjoyable activity, concerned with improving their personal appearance
  • Feminist researchers have shown that women generally have less time for leisure than with housework and children. They also earn less than men with further restrictions in commercial leisure
  • Deem - women's leisure is combined with aspects of childcare such as going to leisure centres and the park
  • Males are threatened by womens leisure -clubbing
• Ethnicity

  • People make cultural choices of leisure activities in accordance to the ethnicity in which they belong eg. food, music and film
  • Asian women are more likely to be restricted at home because of culturally defined roles
  • Roberts - many Asian workers put in long hours to go and visit kinfolk in their countries of origin
  • Younger British-born ethnic minorities are adopting less culturally restricted lifestyles that their parents have
• The pursuit of profit

  • Neo-marxists such as Clarke and Critcher point out that leisure has become highly organised and commercialised multinational industry, employing millions worldwide and making profits
  • Sports and tourism
  • Global marketing of consumer goods through advertising in a media saturated society creates an endless demand
  • No free choice of leisure - advertising convinces people that their series of self depends on buying into lifestyle trends
  • EVALUATION - some groups resist mass culture - CAMRA has challenged the dominance of big breweries , independent cinemas
• Globalisation, consumption and identity

  • Global culture has undermined folk culture due to homogeneization - glocalisation has spread through a media-generated culture industry
  • More diversity in global media
  • International tourism - absorbing other cultures
  • The internet and international division of labour - enables instantaneous communication and exploration of cultures across national boundaries. The whole world is economically interconnected
  • Global migration and diasporas
  • Changing youth cultures
• Conclusion of globalisation, consumption and identity

  • Free choice of leisure and consumption is exaggerated
  • Jenkins believes that identity is rooted within social experience and membership of social groups and not something that can be changed at will
  • Bradley - social inequalities remain important although they no longer shape identities as much as they once did
  • Veblen - buying items to display your wealth rather than what you need, available to all classes but the rich do it better
• Ritzer - McDonaldisation

  • The world has increasingly become like McDonalds - companies operating everywhere with low-skill jobs and limited choices replicated everywhere
  • Things have become more predictable and efficient
  • Coca-colonisation - big transnational cooperations dominating the world, similar to empires in the 1800s
  • EVALUATION - McDonalds is actually an example of a two-way street as menus are not actually replicated identically all around the world