The Social Circles of Leisure: Competing Explanations (Report‪)‬

After many centuries of speculation and nearly a decade of intensive research on leisure behavior [1] we may be at a point where we can question our received wisdom. Our speculation seems to have run at too grand a cultural level or too primary a biological level to encourage the crucible of testing, while our research seems to have gone its independent way filling many a computer bank with collections of abstract facts. Yet, even at this most fundamental level, our standard variables--income, age, race and sex--furnish only a slight explanation of the extremely diverse behavior possibilities found in leisure [2]. Social class position or income level, for example, seems to be associated with some forms of leisure activity; however, intra-class variations slip through this wide-mesh explanation. The activity may be something of a monopoly held by a particular class, yet only a small proportion of the likely participants actually engage in the activity. We might be able to say that few lower class persons will be found sailing yachts, but we cannot say that all upper class persons will be yachtsmen. Nor can we say that as a class position improves there is a corresponding propensity to become a yachtsman.