What was mass leisure culture

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With reference to the above theoretical constatations, I focus in the present study on Manchester in the Victorian period with a twofold purpose. I intend to offer a view of those mass leisure and recreation practices in the city across the class spectrum that were gradually assuming an organised character, paying special attention to the forms that were new, unique and meaningful to the contemporary urban communities. In doing so, I also wish to test the hypothesis that the new urban middle class of 19 th -century Manchester was pursuing an ideologically motivated public policy of disciplining and controlling the city workforce by influencing and regulating their leisure activities.

I would like to identify those ideologies, the motivations behind them and their actual social and cultural impact. Two big blocks of general intellectual reflection and scholarship on leisure and recreation inform the present project in Victorian English cultural history. The first such area is the philosophical thought since antiquity on leisure and recreation as vehicles for human moral and intellectual development particularly influential in 19 th -century England.

In ancient Athens a belief in the importance of equal development of mind and body fuelled philosophical thought on the role of education and leisure. Plato and Aristotle, whose concepts of leisure as a positive aspect of human existence became central in nineteenth-century Britain, and other industrialising nations, shared similar ideas on the role of recreation.

Plato maintained that leisure correctly used, i. While moderate entertainment is a source of pleasure, it is at the same time an integral constituent of the work—rest cycle and has a physiological function of relaxation and the renewal of energy after work.

Aristotle interpreted leisure as a source of happiness and considered it the property of all civilised human beings. Rather than being an occasion for idleness, leisure allowed people to cultivate reason, their most divine characteristic. This seemingly hedonistic philosophy in fact advocated a strict moral code, restraint, self-control, and reason rather than passion. Only adherence to such virtues was supposed to lead to happiness.

Therefore, the utilitarians were hostile towards those leisure activities, for instance some traditional pastimes, which were likely to lead to excess and a loss of self-control through gambling and drinking.

The second rich background area of scholarship relevant to the present project is the vast historiography of leisure pursuits in England across many epochs, especially the works on the complex interaction of leisure and recreational practices with different social institutions and systems, particularly with religion, morality, politics and public order. The character of these relationships varied. In some periods certain forms of recreation, like various combative exercises developing military skills, were actively encouraged by the state authorities as serving the collective national interest.

Others, especially those involving frivolity, drinking, gambling or violence, would become the target of attacks and bans on moral and religious grounds. One reflection resulting from a very general survey of this vast historiography and many literary texts is that despite various institutional attempts to regulate or curb certain pastimes and recreations, the elite noble and useful recreational activities usually coexisted with the common ignoble and lowly ones, as ludic attitudes and a propensity for fun and sporting endeavour were strong among the English.

The regional Declaration of Sports , followed a year later by the nationwide Book of Sports presented the official view of the crown on the matter of Sunday recreation and made leisure an element of state policy. The end of Puritan rule brought considerable relaxation of the attitudes and laws pertaining to leisure and recreation. It does not mean, however, that Puritan influences completely disappeared. The brunt of their attack was launched against games and recreations involving gambling, drinking and sexual liberty.

The advocates of organising cricket and football matches in public parks and of opening museums and art galleries on Sunday often had to deal with strong opposition from the Sabbatarian section of the local authorities and society.

This brief and perforce selective historical survey demonstrates that endeavours to control and regulate leisure and recreation were not a novel nineteenth-century phenomenon in England but had a well-established history. However, the novelty about Victorian Britain consisted in the type, scale and speed of unprecedented socio-economic industrial transformations amid which such attempts were taking place, and the unique approaches and strategies to influence leisure practices of the new social classes, particularly in the new urban centres.

The nineteenth-century industrialisation and urbanisation caused dramatic changes in the environment and the character of leisure and recreation available to the masses. Some old rural forms of recreation were transplanted to urban conditions, new ones were emerging, while some others were disappearing. At the same time, leisure practices of the population were now interacting with other aspects of the industrial civilisation and urbanisation.

Leisure time and its content, particularly of the working class, was the target of legal regulations and became the subject of philanthropic concern and a heated social debate. The notion of the leisured working-man was unknown and such condition for the un-propertied classes implied idleness, unemployment and poverty.

Popular culture and recreation both in rural and small town communities were rooted in the agricultural calendar, with its seasonal holidays and festivals. The advent of industrial capitalism led to the demarcation between what constituted work and leisure, and the separation of living and working spaces.

Yet, leisure remained a function of work. Industrialisation also created new problems concerning the control of time, both in and outside the workplace. The new phenomenon of the leisure time of the labouring classes quickly came to the attention of the middle-class manufacturers and social reformers, who recognized it as a sphere that demanded their intervention and guidance. Koshar argues that two related struggles emerged as the consequences of industrialisation: that over the length and intensity of work time, and that for the control over the leisure activities of the working population.

The present study is theoretically located within the interdisciplinary field of cultural studies and linked with this school of thought by its interest in the political dynamics of culture. The argument is based on the central assumption that the growing economic influence and political power of the urban middle class in nineteenth-century British industrial towns endowed it with the desire and instruments to extend its dominance onto aspects of life other than production, commerce and local government.