THE SOCIAL MEANINGS OF LEISURE

Abstract

This paper deals with the symbolic content of leisure from the point of view of a sociological analysis of its social meanings. We firstly put leisure within the general context of social values, since values relate to the most fundamental grounds from which people tend to legitimate action. In that respect, it is argued that leisure is not as global as values related to work and family, for instance, but is rather found to be a sectorial value, referring to some specific sectors of social life, or some specific activities, or some particular periods of time, considered as `important' by way of gratifying attributes (such as `pleasant', etc.). During the course of daily life, values tend to be adapted to specific action, context, and actors, in terms of social norms, which is our second level of analysis. It is suggested that four main categories of norms can at least be distinguished: norms of action, of involvement, of interaction, and contextual norms. Then values and norms are interiorised and integrated within social personality. Therefore, it follows that another level of analysis can be distinguished: the system of expectations as related to social roles, i.e. the social definitions of how various specialised leisure roles must be performed, as related to the other social roles an actor is identified with. The social meanings of leisure refer to a multi-dimensional, relatively well-structured system of definition and interpretation of daily activities based on values, norms and role expectations.