Leisure and the Modularization of Daily Life

Abstract

The modularization of daily life refers to the growing exchangeability of forms of spending time in the unwinding of daily life (daily paths and life paths) due to increases in the scale of the supply of standardized time-units - filled with more or less predictable, calculable and re-combinable activities - and the simultaneous growth in the opportunities for individual actors to choose from this supply and reflexively organize their daily lives. After having introduced this concept, its relation to leisure is discussed. A distinction is made between having leisure and ways of spending it. In the first case, it is argued that there is no monolithic leisure area, where everybody can do whatever he or she likes. Rather, there exist different leisure-scapes, designating differences in the freedoms people are entitled to, depending on the differences in sources of income. In the second case, the discussion focuses on the relation between leisure and consumption. Particular attention is given to how the search for moral satisfaction shapes the ways people assemble time-modules in their daily life paths.