A Preliminary Bibliography on Leisure

Abstract

In the field of leisure studies since about 1900 there have been several major streams of research, each tending to culminate in a bibliographical perspective of a specific kind. First, there have been many studies of the general consumer market-studies which include reference to the demand for leisure goods and services, their flexibility of demand, their changing percentages, their family profile, their technological interdependence, and so on. The general impulse to such studies can be said to arise from advertising research, on the one hand, and from the theorems of institutional economics and sociology, on the other. Second, numerous historical studies of changes have been made of American leisure throughout the life of the nation. These studies were carefully examined and listed by Dulles in his America Learns To Play. His emphasis is on changes that became more or less visible by about 1925. Third, many studies have been stimulated by education, social work, and recreation, which involve surveys of organized and planned leisure. A number of these are listed by the bibliographies of the National Recreation Association, by G. M. Gloss, and by writers for the foundations, especially the Russell Sage Foundation. Fourth, the "Play Movement," on its individual rather than its social side, has inspired studies especially along the lines suggested by Dewey. Many of the major texts in this field of study are listed by Vivian Wood. Fifth, there has been, since 1920, an increasing volume of psychological research on leisure and on the media of mass communications. There is, as far as we know, no single bibliography which, analytically or in any other way, lists the titles especially relevant to the understanding of play and leisure, although some of the titles that ought to appear on such a list occur scattered in other lists. Sixth, many studies influenced by sociopolitical theories and doctrines have come from sources as widely separated as the work of Thoreau, Comte, Le Play, Spencer, Weber, and Marx-all of them attempts at sociological re-evaluation of the relation between work and play in the modern world. They tend to draw on figures on the utilization of manpower and resources in historical periods. Some have been cited, quoted, and analyzed in recent works, but, in general, they are to be more easily found in bibliographies of the utilization of labor personnel, theory, management, time study, industrial sociology, and related topics than under headings relating them to leisure. However, they are rather well catalogued in the bibliographies of works like Factory Folkways. Seventh, an increasing number of studies have been made of the production and control side of the mass media of communication and amusements themselves, many of which are listed in Lasswell and Smith's The Reader on Communications, in Hugh Duncan's Language and Literature in Society, and in other relevant collections. The organization of the bibliography below was devised because we have not been satisfied with the classification systems so far employed-either for own research purposes or as presenting a fair picture of the study of leisure. Even the bibliographies of leisure, play, and recreation listed above are from angular points of view that reveal 1 By Reuel Denney.