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Leisure

pastimes

The Context of

Contemporary

leisure

Ruth V. Russell

Indiana University

Brown & Benchmark

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“Leisure helps to shape who we are as a culture.”

l e i s u r e

“Leisure is both a victim and a tool of modernization.”

DIgital Stock

KEY TERMS

141

What is leisure’s cultural significance?

Leisure is so much a part of the patterns of life that it can describe how cultures are both similar and different.

leisure’s anthropologyDid the earliest human cultures have leisure?

141

Contrary to the standard view, new data suggest that prehistoric people had abundant free time and spent it relaxing.

How is leisure unique in technologically advanced cultures?

In highly developed cultures leisure tends to be more commercial.

How is leisure unique in developing cultures?

Leisure can be used as a tool for development. As such, leisure is also typically changed by development.

five

141

Cultural anthropology 142

Culture 143

Paleolithic era 143

Modernization I 46

Ethnocentric 146

Philanthropy 148

Turnverein 53

Development 156

Cross-cultural 160

Privatization 160

Animism 164

Ecotourism 170

141

In Finland, there is a wide variation in the

amount of daylight and darkness during the year. The day is shortest during the winter and longest (luring the summer. In midsummer, there are twenty-four hours of daylight, whereas in the middle of winter there are (lays with no daylight. Tuija Sievanen wrote, ‘In the countryside, where I am used to go at Christmas time, I developed some kind of a tradition to make moonlight walks in the late afternoon. The full moon above the white snow landscape is enough to give light to find the way through the woods and fields” (1987, 23).

Before the massive urbanization of black South Africans into white South African areas, which began in the 1930s, few parents of black children had money to buy toys. The result was all sorts of play inventions. The girls played with dolls made from rags and beads. The boys, sometimes eagerly assisted by their fathers and elder brothers, made elaborate wire cars, complete with wheels that could turn and a functioning steering system (Grobler 1985). With urbanization and increased foreign influences, cheap plastic toys became available, which brought an end to this fascinating ingenuity.

In Iran, there is a game called Borkum Topa. Several old hats are

needed for the game. To begin, a circle is drawn three feet in diameter on the ground. The player who is “it” puts a hat in the circle and stands on

guard with one foot on the rim of the circle. Other players try to knock the hat out of the circle, using their hands and feet. While they try to do this, “it”

tries to tag them. The one who is tagged becomes “it” next. When someone succeeds in knocking the hat out of the circle without being tagged, the person who is “it” may run away from the circle and tag anyone at all, That person then becomes “it” (Harbin 1954).

A comparison of the number of paid vacation days and holidays each year specified in union contracts for industrial workers in different countries reveals some interesting distinctions. Workers in the Netherlands, for example, receive the most paid vacation days: forty-one days per year. Italian workers have forty paid holidays each year, and the French enjoy thirty-five. At the other end of the scale, Japanese workers receive twenty-five paid holidays, and American workers receive twenty-three (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 1993).

In this chapter we consider topics that feature leisure from various societies

Cultural anthropology:—specifically, leisure from the perspective of cultural anthropology.
the branch ofThe anthropology of leisure is interesting for several reasons, First, recreative
anthropology thatelements from one culture tend to be adopted by other cultures. Particular
focuses on the patternsgames, songs, dances, and crafts introduced in one culture spread to others
of life of a society.and are often changed in accord with the dominant values of the receiving culture.

For example, Fleider (1977) described a game of physical skill that was developed in Java (Indonesia) and later introduced in a highland New Guinea tribe. The New Guinea culture valued noncompetitiveness, so when they played

Part Two Leisure as a Cultural Mirror—Societal Context

ChapterS Leisure’s Anthropology‘43

the Java game, they disregarded score keeping and rules. This more casual attitude toward the rules of the game were in keeping with their cultural values.

Second, certain forms of leisure act as tools for maintaining the culture.

For example, traditional games of Native Americans and First Nation Canadians, such as lacrosse, helped ensure the continuity of tribal groups. In rural Peru, the daily market is an important focus of social, as well as economic activity.

Finally, leisure in some cases is a fertile ground for cultural innovation. Inventions, such as the automobile, were developed in the context of being playful. In fact, the wheel itself was first important not for work, but as a toy. For example, excavations of ancient Aztec ruins in Mexico revealed wheeled pottery toys.

In this chapter, a comparison of the leisure expressions of various cultures sheds light on a more general interest of how cultures are both similar and different. We discover that cultural complexity exists in the use of such daily human experiences as free time, rest, and pastimes.

To begin our travels, we consider the earliest cultures: paleolithic peoples. The case is made that these people may have been the original affluent society. Next, we will contemplate examples of leisure in technological cultures, such as Japan, Germany, and the United States as well as technology’s antagonism to leisure. Finally, leisure within developing cultures will be explored. Examples of leisure as a tool for cultural development are presented for the cultures of Poland, Malaysia, and Costa Rica.

Culture: a set of standards shared by members of a social group, which when acted upon by the members, produce behavior considered proper and acceptable.

ChapterS Leisure’s Anthropology‘43

Hunches about Paleolithic Cultures

ChapterS Leisure’s Anthropology‘43

Humans are classified by biologists as belonging to the Primate Order, a group that also includes lemurs, tarsiers, monkeys, and apes. Present evidence suggests that humans evolved from the small, apelike ramapithecines, which lived between 15 and 8 million years ago. By 4 million years ago, this apelike creature became fully adapted for moving about on its hind legs in a distinctive human manner, and by 2.5 million years ago the appearance of the earliest stone tools, along with the gradual enlarging of the brain, set the stage for the human of the present (Haviland 1990). The early tools (found in Ethiopia)were choppers, scrapers, gouging tools, and hammerstones for cutting meat, scraping hides, and cracking bones to extract marrow. Their invention marks the beginning of the Paleolithic era, or Old Stone Age, time of human existence. Scientists estimate that only a few thousand people lived in all of Africa and a similar number in Asia during this prehistoric period.

For more than 2 million years, people lived by hunting and by gathering plants, for it was only about 10,000 years ago that people learned to farm. Instead. Paleolithic people lived in groups and moved From place to place in search of food. A group usually stayed in one place for only a few days. They ate the animals and plants in the area and then moved on. They built shelters only if they found enough food in an area to last a few weeks or months.

Paleolithic era: a period in the Stone Age characterized by rough Stone implements

ChapterS Leisure’s Anthropology‘43

No one knows when the first clothing was worn. Early people probably didn’t begin to sew primitive clothes until about 17,000 years ago.

ChapterS Leisure’s Anthropology‘43

In addition to inventing simple tools and clothing, Paleolithic people painted the first pictures. In

fact, they developed several forms of artistic

ChapterS Leisure’s Anthropology‘43

expression. They painted on rock, modeled in clay, and engraved antlers, bone, and ivory. Animals were the most common subject of their paintings, but Paleolithic artists also painted people. They used four colors: black from charcoal; white from clay and lime mud; and red and yellow from animal blood red clay, and ground up iron flakes.

Beyond these art legacies, we don’t know much more about the leisure of people of the Paleolithic era. The standard anthropological view of this

hunting and gathering society is that because they were constantly on the move in search of food for minimal survival, these people must have lacked the time for leisure.

Is there another plausible guess about leisure in the Paleolithic era? Marshall Sahlins, in an anthropological study, suggested that prehistoric people were the original leisure society (1988, 257). Sahlins based this hypothesis on two recent conjectures. First, Paleolithic people may not have spent as much time hunting and gathering food as formerly assumed. Second, Paleolithic people had comparatively few material goods and thus were free from the labors of protecting and maintaining them. Let’s ponder each suggestion in turn.

First, Sahlins cited research about two hunter-gatherer groups living in Australia in the 1960s as examples of what life could have been like for Paleolithic people. The results are surprising. As shown in figure 5.1, the hours per day spent by one of the groups in hunting and gathering activities were not great. The most obvious conclusion Sahlins made from the data was that the people did not have

Figure5.I The hours

per day spent in hunting and

gathering activities by one of

Sahlin’s groups.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Day

d = 3 hre. 50 miii. I day (average)

9 = 3 hrs. 44 mm. I day (average)

Part Two Leisure as a Cultural Mirror—Societal Context

Figure 5.2 Amount of daytime devoted to sleep. According to Sablins hypothesis, free time activities could have included rest, sleep, chatting, and general sociability.

Part Two Leisure as a Cultural Mirror—Societal Context

to work hard to survive. The average length of time each person spent per day collecting and preparing food was three to four hours.

Moreover, they did not work continuously. “It would stop for the time being when the people had procured enough for the time being, which left them plenty of time to spare” (Sahlins 1988, 260). what might prehistoric peoples have done with their spare time? As indicated in figure 5.2, much of the time freed from the necessities of food-connected tasks could have been spent in rest and sleep. According to Sahlins, other free time activities may have also included chatting, gossiping, and general sociability.

The idea that Paleolithic people were the original leisure society also has to do with consumerism. In contrast to the many affluent societies of today, with their focus on materialism, early people possessed very little. The customary quota of material goods for Paleolithic people (as it is for today’s remaining hunter-gatherer groups, such as the Bushmen of Kalahari) was most likely a few pieces of clothing, portable housing materials, a few ornaments, spare flints, some medicinal quartz, a few tools and weapons, and a skin bag to hold it all. Contrast this with the collection of possessions you have! Further, think about all the time you spend -purchasing repairing, cleaning, putting away, transporting, sorting, finding, protecting, and storing your possessions,

In terms of leisure today, it appears that consumption is a double tragedy. We have to work in order to purchase material goods and work some more to take care of them. As Sahlins pointed out, Paleolithic people were comparatively free from material pressures. In fact, they lived in a kind of material plenty because they adapted the tools of their living to the materials that lay in abundance around them, free for anyone to take, such as wood, reeds, stones, bone, and grass, For them (unlike for us), the accumulation and hoarding of objects was not associated with status. To Sahlins, it is not that Paleolithic people learned how to curb their materialistic impulses; they simply never made an institution of them. Some might think hunter-gatherers poor because they didn’t have anything. Another view is to think of them as rich in the freedom of time.

Leisure in Technological Cultures

In this section, we compare the leisure of three modern societies: the United States, Japan, and Germany. These countries represent what we call the modem cultures of the world: North America, western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and increasingly the Pacific rim countries. These cultures arc modern in the sense that they are industrially, technologically, and commercially advanced,

The point of our discussion is that leisure within the context of modernization is uniquely expressed, For example, leisure behavior in these cultures

Chapters Leisure Anthropology145

Modernization: involving implementation of recent techniques, methods, or ideas.

Ethnocentric: the belief that ones own culture is superior in every way to all others.

tends to be consumption oriented. Because the standard of living is high, people have large amounts of discretionary money with which to buy leisure goods and experiences. Before we consider all this, let’s consider the concept of modernization. The process of modernization might be described as consisting of four subprocesses: technological development, agricultural development, industrialization, and urbanization (Haviland 1990). These elements of modernization are interrelated and occur simultaneously. First, with modernization, traditional knowledge and techniques are replaced by scientific knowledge and techniques. Likewise, the culture shifts from an emphasis on subsistence farming to commercial farming. Industrialization is the third subprocess; work is now done by machines rather than humans and animals. Finally the population becomes urbanized by moving from rural settlements into cities.

If we examine this perspective, we realize that modernization is actually an ethnocentric notion. Looking closely at its definition reveals that “becoming modern” really means “becoming like u~.’ Accordingly, there is a clear implication that not being like us is to be antiquated and obsolete. Modernization can also mean undesirable losses of traditional customs.

United States

Occupying over 3,5 million square miles, the United States is one of the world’s larger countries. Its population is slightly more than 251 million, making its density approximately sixty-nine persons per square mile. The predominant languages are English and Spanish. The literacy rate is 96 percent. The gross national product is over $4,862 billion with a per capita annual income average of $19,800. The economic growth rate of the United States is 3.8 percent. Major religious groups are Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish.

While the context of leisure in the United States is peppered throughout this book, we consider this culture here in an anthropological way in order to draw direct comparisons. Because the American constitution guarantees every citizen the right to pursue happiness, the leisure pursuits of the people in the United States have become recognizable worldwide. Today, Americans have the reputation of enjoying a recreation-focused lifestyle. We draw our comparisons specifically from the areas of relaxation, mass media, sports, tourism, outdoor recreation, and volunteerism.

In a guidebook written for first-time visitors to the United States, Americans are described in the following way: Most Americans are eager to assure non-Americans that they live in a casual, relaxed manner. This may be far from true, in spite of the American tendency to accept as an article of faith that the good life is the relaxed one. To Americans relaxing symbolizes having a good time (as evident in magazine and television advertisements), but relaxing is exactly what many Americans cannot do very well.

Part Two Leisure as a Cultural Mirror—Societal Context

People from other cultures have generally characterized the leisure habits of people from the United States as demanding. An Indian married to an American said, “We went to see the Grand Canyon and as soon as we got there my wife wanted to go rushing down to the bottom. These Americans never. relax.” (Wanning 1991, 51). People in the United States have a tendency to believe that useful activities are the most valuable and meaningful. When they do get away from work, their leisure often seems another form of labor. Americans are busy taking night classes, doing needlework, competing on a bowling league, leading scout troops, playing cards, reading newspapers, running church groups, lifting weights, redecorating a room, counting calories and jogged miles, and making holiday decorations. Weekends are full of camping, skiing, home improvement, and gardening.