Time, work and leisure by Hugh Cunningham
In the 1960s and 1970s it was argued that leisure time would increase at a rapid rate. This prophecy has turned out to be false, and time is now equated with achieving a 'work-life balance' where 'life' is often unpaid childcare and domestic work. This book traces the history of the relationship between work and leisure, from the 'leisure preference' of male workers in the eighteenth century, through the increase in working hours in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, to their progressive decline from 1830 to 1970. It examines how trade union action was critical in achieving the decline, how class structured the experience of leisure, how male identity was shaped by both work and leisure, and how, in a society that placed high value on work, a 'leisured class' was nevertheless at the apex of political and social power - until it became thought of as 'the idle rich'. Two further tranches of time came to be marked out as properly without work: childhood and retirement. By the mid-twentieth century, married men had achieved a work-leisure balance. This was far from the case for married women. The book shows how their entry into the labour market in the later twentieth century sparked new thinking about work and time, coinciding with a halt to the decline in working hours, and a reversal of the trend in some sectors of the economy. Accessible, wide-ranging and occasionally polemical, this book provides the first history of how we have imagined and used time.-
The British seaside
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Women's Leisure in England 192060
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Scotland and the music hall, 18501914
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Railways and culture in Britain
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Christmas in Nineteenth-Century England
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British Railway Enthusiasm
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Leisure, Citizenship and WorkingClass Men in Britain, 18501940
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Juke box Britain
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Cricket and Broadcasting
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Holiday Camps in Twentieth-Century Britain
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The BBC and National Identity in Britain, 1922-53
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Looking North
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From silent screen to multi-screen
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The Romance of Adventure
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Hard Sell
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History on British Television
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Leisure and Cultural Conflict in Twentieth-Century Britain
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Cinema and Radio in Britain and America, 192060
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Leisure cultures in urban Europe, c.1700-1870
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Cinemas and Cinemagoing in Wartime Britain, 1939-45
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Women Drinking out in Britain Since the Early Twentieth Century
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Amateur Film
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The Experience of Suburban Modernity
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Heroes and Happy Endings
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Politics, Performance and Popular Culture
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The Food Companions
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London calling Italy
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Dancing in the English Style
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Healthy Living in the Alps
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Songs of Protest, Songs of Love
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Darts in England, 1900-39
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Ladies First
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Entertaining the empire
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Worlds of the ring
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Growing Up and Going out
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The Car and British Society
Time, Work and Leisure is a pleasure to read, and should find a wide audience, including undergraduate students and even policymakersCunningham strikes a good balance between descriptive narrative and a Thompsonian use of a wider range of primary sources, from poetry to first-hand narratives to employer screeds, workers' time-diaries, and government statistics. Moreover, he does an excellent job historically contextualizing present concerns about how we spend our time. -- Jamie Bronstein. Labour/Le Travail, Volume 76
Hugh Cunningham is Emeritus Professor of Social History at the University of Kent
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781784993559 |
| ISBN 10 | 1784993557 |
| Title | Time, work and leisure |
| Author | Hugh Cunningham |
| Series | Studies In Popular Culture |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Manchester University Press |
| Year published | 2016-06-20 |
| Number of pages | 240 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |