Doing, Being, and Boredom

Abstract

My research on the time use and subjective experience of young offenders has uncovered that many experience a high degree of boredom. At first, this boredom appears to be related to their lack of engagement in productive occupations, such as education and work and the predominance of time spent in passive leisure and personal care occupations. The experience of boredom is often associated with ideas of victimization and entrapment. An implicit assumption is that people have a right to not be bored, and that society's obligations include preventing this boredom. One means to achieve this is believed to be through engagement in paid employment. However, in this paper, I will argue that boredom may loom large in our culture today and may be just as prevalent amongst those in paid employment as those who are unemployed. Using my research with young offenders and several literary explanations of the phenomenon of boredom, I will illustrate that boredom is a little understood concept which is intimately linked with human occupation and meaning, and thus is of interest to occupational scientists.