Is Leisure a Right or a Privilege? How Leisure Time Affects the Rich vs. the Poor
Introduction
The concept of leisure is on that has been used to measure the equity within the masses and the degree to which different classes, genders or groups share the same amount of “free” time. One of the problems with examining leisure, however, is that it is a rather subjective experience—and what constitutes leisure for one may be vastly different from how another sees it. This paper examines the issue of leisure from the standpoint of class by looking at how leisure time is experience among the rich and the poor. Ultimately it shows that leisure is not a universal concept that means the same to all people or is even experienced in the same way, so it is superficial to draw comparisons between groups or classes based on how much leisure time they have or how they experience leisure.
Equity in Leisure?
Equity in leisure is a rather fanciful concept because it is simply unrealistic to expect that all classes, all groups of people, all cultures, and all nations will view leisure in the same way. In a society that values work over leisure, people are not going to see this issue in the same light as people who come from a culture that values leisure more highly than work. As Hofstede (1998) shows, these differences are real. But it is not even an issue just on a cultural level. Even the genders experience leisure and engage in leisure differently (Codina & Pestana, 2019). From the standpoint of the rich vs. poor dichotomy, however, there are a few points that must be made before exploring this paradigm.
The first point is that class differences exist but that they reflect cultural differences at root (Hogan, 2017). How leisure is perceived by those who experience it is not going to be the same as how it is examined by those who are studying it from the outside looking in. Leisure is different for everyone: it is not a universal.
The second point is that historical shifts in culture, economy, politics, class, and so on, have impacted the way people experience leisure. As The Economist (2014) explained, the rich used to have abundant time for leisure. From Downtown Abbey to the books of P.G. Wodehouse, examples of this fact are not wanting. However, in more recent times, the tendency to work a great deal has shifted from the poorer classes to the upper classes. The work ethic has transferred from the poor to the rich in a sense, and so now it is not uncommon to find the richest people working through the weekend while the poorest indulge themselves at a more leisurely pace (Economist, 2014).
Moreover, because of cultural...
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