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Politics and Leisure

Politics and Leisure Politics and Leisure THELMA McCORMACK York university, Toronto, Canada ANYONE thinking about the meaning or place of leisure in Western societies observes a close relationship between our confused, ambivalent attitudes toward leisure and the Protestant Ethic. There is a certain obvious truth in this discovery, for, after all, what aspect of modern life does not bear the imprint of that profound transformation of attitudes and social relationships that began in the sixteenth century? Although it is easily shown that in the twentieth century the Protestant Ethic is preached more often than it is practiced, and that its cognitive admonitions are taken more seriously than its normative ones, yet it is still operative in some form, and it is unmistakably part of the symbolic culture of western Man. Just when we think it is exhausted and about to expire, it resurfaces in a new form, with fresh energy and where least expected. A generation raised on what one observer called a "fun mo- rality," (Wolfenstein: 1960) a one-hundred-and-eighty degree turn from an ethos in which fun and morality was a contradiction in terms, has grown up to demonstrate a taste for ideological passion, for Fundamentalist fervor not to mention http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png International Journal of Comparative Sociology (in 2002 continued as Comparative Sociology) Brill

Politics and Leisure

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Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© 1971 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
0020-7152
eISSN
1745-2554
DOI
10.1163/156854271X00128
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Politics and Leisure THELMA McCORMACK York university, Toronto, Canada ANYONE thinking about the meaning or place of leisure in Western societies observes a close relationship between our confused, ambivalent attitudes toward leisure and the Protestant Ethic. There is a certain obvious truth in this discovery, for, after all, what aspect of modern life does not bear the imprint of that profound transformation of attitudes and social relationships that began in the sixteenth century? Although it is easily shown that in the twentieth century the Protestant Ethic is preached more often than it is practiced, and that its cognitive admonitions are taken more seriously than its normative ones, yet it is still operative in some form, and it is unmistakably part of the symbolic culture of western Man. Just when we think it is exhausted and about to expire, it resurfaces in a new form, with fresh energy and where least expected. A generation raised on what one observer called a "fun mo- rality," (Wolfenstein: 1960) a one-hundred-and-eighty degree turn from an ethos in which fun and morality was a contradiction in terms, has grown up to demonstrate a taste for ideological passion, for Fundamentalist fervor not to mention

Journal

International Journal of Comparative Sociology (in 2002 continued as Comparative Sociology) – Brill

Published: Jan 1, 1971

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