In spite of this concern, there is disagreement over the meaning of the term leisure and the relationship between leisure and work. For example, the NVGA-AVA position paper viewed work as an "expenditure of effort designed to effect some change, however slight, in some province of civilization". Thus, leisure may be work under certain circumstances but not under others-and confusion reigns. The following review of literature and research is an attempt to define leisure more clearly and to examine work-leisure relationships.
Definition of Leisure
The literature on leisure, most of which is based on little or no research, offers a confusing array of definitions of the term. However, Parker has offered the following categories, which represent an adequate attempt to bring order out of confusion: (1) definitions that concentrate on the dimension of time, (2) definitions concerned with quality of activity or being, and (3) definitions that attempt to combine the two.
Time definitions of leisure have been offered by Soule, Gross, and Lundberg, among others. The major concern of this group is the determination of what is to be taken out of total time in order that leisure alone remains. There is by no means a consensus with regard to this problem. Soule, for example, defined leisure as unsold time (one's own time) regardless of what is done with it. Within this framework, sold time refers simply to one's job. Gross, on the other hand, suggested that leisure consists of time left over after work and maintenance activities have been carried out. Maintenance may include a number of activities that are entirely out of the realm of work (eating, sleeping, hygiene). Lundberg, however, viewed leisure in terms of the time one is free from the "more obvious and formal duties" imposed by one's job or other obligations.
Representative of definitions that stress the quality of leisure are those offered by Peiper and deGrazia. For example, deGrazia noted the difference between "free time" and leisure:
Leisure and free time live in two different worlds. We have got in the habit of thinking them the same. Anybody can have free time. Free time is a realizable idea of democracy. Leisure is not fully realizable... Free time refers to a special way of calculating a special kind of time. Leisure refers to a state of being, a condition of man, which few desire and fewer achieve.
According to deGrazia, it is free time that individuals have at their disposal in American society. His view corresponds with the classical Greek concept of leisure (still prevalent to some degree in European cultures), which emphasizes the aspects of being and contemplation. Such a definition offers nothing to the study of leisure, however, as it treats the concept as an immeasurable variable. The extensive research of deGrazia in the area of free time has, to some degree, aided in conceptualizing that elusive term; however, according to his pseudo-aristocratic definition, this is, at best, the leisure of industrial society.
Between the time and quality definitions of leisure are those which include the concept of leisure as residual time but go further by adding a "positive description of its content or function, usually a prescriptive element". Definitions of this type are offered by Gist and Fava and Dumazedier. Gist and Fava stated that leisure is "the time which an individual has free from work or other duties and which may be utilized for purposes of relaxation, diversion, social achievement or personal development". According to Dumazedier, the individual may use leisure time "to rest, to amuse himself to add to his knowledge, or improve his skills ... or to increase his voluntary participation in the life of the community after discharging his professional, family and social duties".
In most of the above definitions, but not in those that stress the quality of leisure exclusively, it is assumed that leisure and work are at opposite extremes of a time continuum. That is, it is assumed that leisure time and work time do not overlap. However, there is little agreement as to what actually constitutes leisure time. Thus, Parker [13] has drawn on the contributions of a number of writers in an effort to devise an orderly time scheme for analyzing individual life space. It includes work time and non-work time, with work time divided into work and work obligations, and non-work time divided into physiological needs, non-work obligations, and leisure. Work time, of course, refers to time spent earning a living-job time. Work obligations may include the time spent traveling to and from work, preparing to work, and attending work-related meetings or conferences. Time spent meeting physiological needs includes sleeping, eating, washing, and so forth. Non-work obligations refer to those activities that usually involve obligations to other people but may include "non-human objects" such as the home, pets, garden. Leisure is viewed as time left over after other commitments and obligations have been met.
This appears more flexible than a time scheme alone. For example, it allows for leisure-type activities within the work setting. Thus, an individual may engage in some freely chosen activities while at the work site (e.g., a lunch-hour card game). Parker pointed out, however, that such activities do not constitute true leisure, because the individual remains constrained by the requirements of the work environment and, ultimately, by the necessity of earning a living.
Parker's scheme also allows for a wide range of individual differences in the conceptualization and use of non-work time. For example, visiting relatives on a Sunday afternoon may be viewed as a non-work obligation by one individual because of the external pressure from family members of the feeling that it is "the right thing to do."
Some degree of constraint accompanies the activity. For another individual, however, visiting relatives may be viewed as leisure, freely chosen with "no strings attached." Similarly, one individual may feel the pressure from neighbors or family to maintain the yard, whereas another may feel none of this pressure and may view such activities as true leisure.
Parker, by devising this two-dimensional scheme, has avoided the pitfalls of many of the authors mentioned earlier: prescribing the kinds of activities that should be engaged in during one's leisure time. To assume that specific activities-whether deGrazia's contemplation or Dumazedier's community participation-constitute the only genuine use of leisure time is, to say the least, presumptuous. Parker, possibly in defense of beer drinking and TV watching, has placed the responsibility for determining what activities constitute leisure on the individual, where it belongs.
The recognition of individual freedom and choice in the pursuit of leisure activities, as well as the definite break between work and leisure, included in Parker's conceptualization is important for counselors who are concerned with assisting people with their leisure development as well as their vocational development. Perhaps, just perhaps, it helps to point the way out of the morass created by the work-leisure literature over the years.
Relationships between Work and Leisure
It is generally assumed in the literature that work and leisure are directly related. There is little agreement, however, about the nature of this relationship. Most theorizing in this area can be separated into opposing positions: polarity or fusion.
Studies of industrial workers by Dubin, Kornhauser and Lafitte appear to provide evidence for the polarity of the work-leisure relationship. Work (the job) is imbued with so many negative characteristics, particularly for semiskilled or unskilled workers, that they use their leisure to escape, often participating in activities that are the complete antithesis of their work.
The polarity view of leisure has been advanced by a number of other writers, particularly the professional recreationists who advocate planned leisure programs for the public from cradle to grave. Meyer, for example, stated, "Adults need to establish a definite rhythm between work and recreation, to balance vocational and avocational interests". In other words, leisure is a therapeutic mechanism in the life of the individual; one "gets away from it all" to "recreate" for a while.
Blum, who also studied the leisure pursuits of industrial workers, proposed an entirely different concept: a fusion between work and leisure. He found that most workers, although desiring to get away from work and everything it stands for, participate mainly in leisure activities similar to the work process. Such activity requires little initiative or attention and "makes it possible to carry an essential attitude growing out of the work process into the leisure time... it eliminates the necessity of a basic change in attitude, of effort, and attention".
Riesman explained the work-leisure fusion in terms of the changing American character from "inner-directedness" to "other-directedness." "The other-directed person has no clear core of self to escape from; no clear line between production and consumption; between adjusting to the group and serving private interests; between work and play". According to Howe, however, other-directedness is a mode of adjustment to industrial civilization. It is through mass culture that the fusion between work and leisure occurs in the highly industrial system:
Whatever its manifest content, mass culture must... not subvent the basic patterns of industrial life. Leisure time must be so organized as to bear a factitious relationship to working time: apparently different, actually the same. It must provide relief from work monotony without making the return to work unbearable.
On one side are those who claim that (at least for some groups within American society) work and leisure are consciously separated into two distinct spheres, with the latter sometimes providing individuals' major satisfactions in life. On the other side are those who maintain that the two spheres cannot be separated either by choice or by subconscious psychological processes. Parker's conceptualization allows for the incorporation of both fusion and polarity in work-leisure relationships. Leisure, for some individuals, may represent an attempt to flee the pressures or boredom of work; others may consciously choose to participate in leisure activities similar to the work process. Thus, the polarity-fusion argument is eliminated. This refreshingly different view of leisure and work-leisure relationships should be given careful consideration by those in the counseling profession seriously concerned about the leisure life of the individual.
