Better Futures Now: Leisure, Health and Wellbeing: a talk by Emeritus Professor David Rowe

This paper is based on a talk at Western Sydney University Research Week, Better Futures Now: Leisure, Health and Wellbeing, Parramatta City Campus, 15 July 2024.

From Devil’s Hands to Healthy Minds and Bodies:
A Social Scientific History of the Concept of Leisure.

Emeritus Professor David Rowe, FAHA, FASSA
Institute for Culture and Society

Introduction: Trying to Make Our Days

The idea that in the affluent West a leisure society (Veal, 2019) had arrived or was imminent emerged in the early 1960s pre-Hippie era and flourished in the 1970s. It is the product of an evolutionary theory proposing that industrial capitalist modernity, once defined by alienating work and controlled time and space, was irreversibly transitioning to a post-industrial/capitalist/modern world characterised by leisure and free time. A combination of technological, social, cultural and political changes made this leisurely world imaginable and notionally possible. In Europe during the pre-industrial Middle Ages, leisure had little substantive meaning. Labour, which was predominantly agricultural (quite literally) in nature both for men and women, obeyed the rhythms of sun, season and the church bell rather than the sirens of factories and mines, life’s routines only periodically disrupted by occasional carnivalesque days of a world turned upside down, violent folk football matches, and adrenalin-fuelled peasant revolts.

Under early industrial capitalism and its accompanying urbanisation, long, dangerous days of work for men and children, and the consignment of women to the private sphere designed to reproduce many short-lived humans (while themselves risking perilous multiple childbirths) and to recreate the labour power of men, free time was at a premium. But with the growth of cities and worker organisation, leisure and recreation beyond drinking cheap gin and cock fighting became an increasingly important part of the trade between the bourgeoisie and proletariat (Rojek, Shaw, and Veal, 2016). A leisure industry emerged at this time to service available surplus hours and to tap growing discretionary income, as exemplified by the enclosure of sport grounds, charging for admission, the professionalisation of athletes, and the rise of ancillary industries such as hospitality and gambling.

Leisure, Health, Wellbeing: Freedom and Control

As leisure – the etymological origin of which lies in the notion of ‘licence’ – time and options expanded, there was increasing elite anxiety, not least among religious authorities, that it would stimulate immorality, especially among the young. Variations of Biblical and Chaucerian proverbs, such as “the Devil makes work for idle hands”, which was parodied in a Futurama (2003) episode on television as“The Devil’s Hands Are Idle Playthings”, gained increased currency (Clarke and Critcher, 2016). Consequently, as is still evident today, the discourse of leisure was often marked by contests over freedom and control. Liberal nation-states intervened in regulating and prescribing forms of leisure in civil society and, in the twentieth century, the applied academic interdisciplinary area of Leisure Studies (Veal, Darcy, and Lynch, 2013) emerged to give scientific weight to the latest modes of governmentality. This was an important, logical development and one which, like industrialism and capitalism, travelled along the lines of imperialism and colonialism beyond its origins in the West to take root in various configurations across the globe. Elements of leisure practice could be found in such dispersed places that were not produced out of a work-leisure binary structure. In Australia, for example, something resembling the leisure society could be said to exist avant la lettre among First Nations peoples prior to the imposition of industrial time, as:

• Moving throughout their country in accordance with the seasons, people only needed to spend about 4-5 hours per day working to ensure their survival. With such a large amount of leisure time available, they developed a rich and complex ritual life – language, customs, spirituality and the law – the heart of which was connection to the land. (Aboriginal Heritage Office, 2024)

But unfortunately, taking leisure seriously in an intellectual and operational sense often resulted in a rather narrow, under-theorised and technocratic approach to it that insufficiently questioned the role of the state (for example, with regard to censorship) and its increasingly intensive corporate commercialisation (Rowe and Lawrence, 1998). Those engaged professionally in the sphere of leisure, including as educators, were sometimes complicit – for example, with regard to tourism (Morrison and Buhalis, 2024) – by seeking to de-politicise its social and environmental dimensions over-emphasise its economic benefits.

Although Leisure Studies as an interdisciplinary area and policy domain had its origins in the USA and UK, Gough Whitlam’s Labor government in the 1970s made a notably progressive contribution through its “(e)quality of life agenda”. In his famous November 1972 election speech at Blacktown, Sydney making the case for a change of government after 23 years of conservative (Liberal-National coalition) rule, Whitlam boldly stated:

• There is no greater social problem facing Australia than the good use of expanding leisure. It is the problem of all modern and wealthy communities. It is, above all, the problem of urban societies and thus, in Australia, the most urbanised nation on earth, a problem more pressing for us than for any other nation on earth. For such a nation as ours, this may very well be the problem of the 1980s; so we must prepare now; prepare the generation of the ‘80s – the children and youth of the 70s – to be able to enjoy and enrich their growing hours of leisure. (Museum of Australian Democracy/Australian Labor Party, 2024)

Aspects of this stance on leisure have not aged well in the light of substantial increases in the hours worked in various sectors, as well as of the blurring of boundaries between work and leisure consequent upon accentuated digitisation in everyday lives. Nonetheless, this was an audacious position to take at the time in pledging that:

• every person living in Australia should have equal access to all the things which make Australia the nation it is. Not just healthcare and education, but access to art, culture, sport and entertainment, and having libraries and community centres in your area to connect with the people around you. (Whitlam Institute, 2021)

This sentiment, with its openness to diverse leisure experiences and acute concern with social equity, retains its relevance, as signified by Western Sydney’s University’s Health and Wellbeing Research Theme Program’s (2024) espousal of the “benefits of engagement in sport, arts, music, creative practice, culture, festivals, play, tourism, recreation, and physical activity for health and wellbeing”. As sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1984) has proposed, though, work of this kind requires a close focus on the distinct and intersecting cultural fields (Rowe, Turner, and Waterton, 2018), within which multiple selves are formed and shaped, social meanings proposed and contested, and practices routinised and rejected in contemporary societies.

But such principles and their attendant policies inevitably confront blockages and contradictions given the persistently economistic emphases on the predominance of the generation and distribution of private wealth. Material conditions are, of course, vitally important underpinnings of the capacity to enjoy leisure, health and wellbeing, but for obvious reasons they can overwhelm, especially during recurrent crises caused by everything from finance capitalism to pandemics to military confrontations, the domains of leisure and pleasure vulnerable to be dismissed as optional or even indulgent. For this reason, Leisure Studies has been constrained in countenancing wider values and policies underpinned by cogent theories, empirical evidence, and social ethics (Rowe, 2002; 2011; 2016).

In a defensive play, Leisure Studies has frequently been forced to over-promise on the advantages of prescribed forms of leisure, which as noted can contain insidious elements of control and disciplinarity. Successive ‘moral panics’ (Cohen, 2002) – a much misunderstood and misapplied concept that has infiltrated public discourse from the Sociology of Deviance of the 1960s (Rowe, 2009) – have been associated with everything from mixed-sex dancing in the 1920s and punk hairstyles in the 1970s to home videos in the 1980s and pocket smartphones in the 21^st century. As the arts and culture world has discovered to its cost, one way of fending off such social anxieties around leisure has been to emphasise a primary economic imperative beneath anodyne expressions of cultural liberation. For this reason, culture has for the last two decades been frequently discussed in terms of the ‘creative industries’ (Stevenson, 2023), and public diplomacy through art, culture and sport harnessed to the export of services such as event marketing and management. A renewed program of engagement with leisure must beware of such overly instrumentalist, commerce-by-proxy traps and, as Bourdieu has influentially argued, take account of the struggles over social and cultural as well as economic capital (Bennett et al, 2020) to which we could add physical and embodied capital (lisahunter, Smith, and emerald, 2015) in response to the leisure-health-wellbeing triad.

Conclusion: Leisure Futures and Ghosts

The cautionary tone adopted here is necessary not to discourage engagement with leisure, health and wellbeing, but to avoid as far as possible earlier mistakes where laudable ambitions have materialised in manipulative and even exploitative forms. The question, then, is not whether to engage with ‘LHW’ – a compelling case can and has been made for it – but how. It requires a clear-eyed approach sedulously committed to key principles of inclusion and equity, abjuring sanctimony and moralism (Rojek, 2010), to return to the oft-forgotten elements of Folk Devils and Moral Panics, both ‘moral entrepreneurialism’ and, particularly salient in our time, ‘authoritarian’ and related forms of populism (Tomlinson and Clift, 2021). It is encouraging to see new generations of researchers, scholars and practitioners enter this complex field, and to witness its consistent, expansive interdisciplinarity. We can indeed help shape ‘better futures’ now in leisure, health and wellbeing, but only by recognising its ‘worse pasts’, wishful thinking and unfulfilled promises.

References and Further Reading

Aboriginal Heritage Office (2024) A Brief Aboriginal History. Sydney, https://www.aboriginalheritage.org/history/history/

Bennett, T., Carter, D., Gayo, M., Kelly, M. and Noble, G. (eds) (2020) Fields, Capitals, Habitus: Australian Culture, Inequalities and Social Divisions. London and New York: Routledge.

Bourdieu P. (1984) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge.

Clarke, J. and Critcher, C. (2016/1985) The Devil Makes Work: Leisure in Capitalist Britain. London: Bloomsbury.

Cohen, S. (2002/1972) Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers (3rd edition). London: Routledge.

Futurama (2003) ‘The Devil’s Hands Are Idle Playthings’, Dir. Bret Haaland, Fox.

lisahunter, Smith, W. and emerald, e. (eds) (2015) Pierre Bourdieu and Physical Culture. London: Routledge.

Morrison, A.M. and Buhalis, D. (eds) (2024) Routledge Handbook of Trends and Issues in Tourism Sustainability, Planning and Development, Management, and Technology. London and New York: Routledge.

Museum of Australian Democracy/Australian Labor Party (2024/1972) Australian Federal Election Speeches. https://electionspeeches.moadoph.gov.au/speeches/1972-gough-whitlam

Rojek, C. (2010) The Labour of Leisure: The Culture of Free Time. London: Sage.

Rojek, C., Shaw, S., and Veal, A.J. (eds) (2016) Handbook of Leisure Studies. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Rowe, D. (2016) ‘Complexity and the Leisure Complex’, Annals of Leisure Research, 19(1): 1-6.

Rowe, D. (2011) ‘Serious Leisure Studies: The Roads Ahead Less Travelled. A Commentary on Stebbins’, World Leisure Journal 53(1): 23-6.

Rowe, D. (2002) ‘Producing the Crisis: The State of Leisure Studies’, Annals of Leisure Research, 5(1): 1-13.

Rowe, D. (2009) ‘The Concept of the Moral Panic: An Historico-Sociological Positioning’, in D. Lemmings and C. Walker (eds) Moral Panics, the Press and the Law in Early Modern England. New York and Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 22-40.

Rowe, D. and Lawrence, G. (eds) (1998) Tourism, Leisure, Sport: Critical Perspectives. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.

Rowe, D., Turner, G. and Waterton, E. (eds) (2018) Making Culture: Commercialisation, Transnationalism, and the State of ‘Nationing’ in Contemporary Australia. London and New York: Routledge.

Stevenson, D. (2023) Cultural Policy Beyond the Economy: Work, Value and the Social. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.

Tomlinson, A. and Clift, B. (eds) (2021) Populism in Sport, Leisure, and Popular Culture. London and New York: Routledge.

Veal, A. J. (2019) Whatever Happened to the Leisure Society? London and New York: Routledge.

Veal, A.J., Darcy, S., and Lynch, R. (2013) Australian Leisure (4th edition). Sydney: Pearson Australia.

Western Sydney University (2024) Better Futures Now: Leisure, Health and Wellbeing, https://events.humanitix.com/better-futures-now-leisure-health-and-wellbeing

Whitlam Institute (2021) What is Gough Whitlam’s ‘Quality of Life’ Agenda? Parramatta: Western Sydney University, 9 November, https://www.whitlam.org/explainers/2021/11/23/what-is-gough-whitlams-quality-of-life-agenda