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This study examines the influence of taxation on the wife's choice between home and market production by treating the marginal tax rate as a decision variable. The data analyzed, from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, provide information on the annual hours that husbands and wives devote to market work and housework, including child care, whereas previous studies have measured only changes in market hours and have assumed, in effect, that all other hours were devoted to nonproductive leisure. The empirical results indicate that wives working outside the home react to higher levels of taxation by reducing their market hours and increasing their home production time. In fact, the hypothesis cannot be rejected that wives completely reallocate time lost from the labor market to nonmarket production in an attempt to restore household real income. The authors conclude that the production loss from progressive taxation is usually overstated, though wives may lose through depreciation of their market skills and society loses to the extent that specialization in the economy declines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John Holland’s RIASEC theory of workplace personality posits that most people resemble a combination of six personality types. The Self-Directed Search® provides the user with a Summary Code that represents the three personality types to which they are most similar. The Leisure Activities Finder™ (LAF) includes a listing of leisure activities, with corresponding codes, which allows users to search for activities that match their Summary Code. During a recent revision of the LAF, the authors developed a list of new activities to be included and assigned codes to them. In a validation study, participants rated activities corresponding to their Summary Code and corresponding to their opposite code. Overall, they rated activities corresponding to their code to be relatable and interesting. Implications for career counseling are discussed, as well as the potential for use of the LAF across the life span. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than ever, social scientists have reason to question the assumption that work is the human activity of value and leisure is little more than a respite from work; a way to consume its fruits and prepare for more work. This article compares four conceptualizations of the demanding activities people choose for themselves in their spare time. Each one is based on relatively recent empirical studies and presented to social science with a distinct term: 'serious leisure', 'specialized play', 'edgework', and 'consumption within a fantasy enclave'. Any conceptual representation allows certain interpretations of social phenomena and blocks others. In this case, vastly different pictures emerge, depending on the conception chosen. Thus, the major finding of the article is that sociology urgently needs to assess its vocabulary in order to understand how the modern predicament affects men and women in their freest moments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The utopianization of 'creative work' is a pronounced feature of postindustrial societies. The author analyzes the attendant promotion of 'creative leisure', and its role in supporting discourses and practices of creative work. Through an analysis of Richard Florida's influential text The Rise of the Creative Class, it is argued that, while creative leisure is offered up as a means of free and autonomous expression, it may be leading, paradoxically, to the erosion of freedom as the terrain of critical and disinterested leisure is pervasively colonized by discourses of economic rationality. Secondly, it is contended that whereas, traditionally, capital has always sought to regulate and administer leisure 'from above'--with workers variably 'resisting' below--such a model may no longer apply since (according to Florida) creative-class subjects now appear to be actively choosing to perform (rather than being coerced into) economically directed leisure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the experiences of 31 participants in three women's folk dance groups in Taiwan through the reproduction/resistance perspectives, which regard leisure as a means either to enhance or to challenge traditional gender ideologies and inequities. The findings suggest that the difference between reproducing or resisting societally imposed constraints lies in the negotiation strategy that is used, rather than in constraining factors, and that the coping strategy of negotiation is critical for women's resistance. Implications for social work are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Need for Closure is an individual characteristic which may help explain individual differences in engagement in leisure activities. Both a leisure engagement inventory and a validated Dutch version of the Need for Closure Scale were administered to a convenient sample of 1,035 young adults ages 15 to 24 years of whom 552 were female. Leisure engagement was hypothesized to differ for groups differing in Need for Closure. More specifically, youngsters who score high (versus low) on Need for Closure engaged more in structured, cognitively effortless, and predictable leisure activities like shopping for fun and going to the cinema, while young adults scoring low (versus high) on Need for Closure more often participated in unstructured, unpredictable, cognitively effortful or challenging leisure activities like going to a party, a pub, or a pop concert, idly lazing away, visiting or hosting friends, attending an evening class and playing computer games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 he 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been suggested that serious leisure can reduce problems resulting from meaningless leisure because serious leisure requires sustained and committed involvement. Youth sport participation has traditionally been viewed as a positive leisure involvement because of its contribution to healthy lifestyles and character development. These benefits can be compromised when parents and coaches engage in youth sport as their own serious leisure. This article examines the positive and negative implications of youth sports as serious leisure for children and adults. Stebbins's six qualities of serious leisure-personal effort, perseverance, career, subculture, identification, and long-lasting benefits--are discussed, as well as the role of parents and coaches. Suggestions for improving the youth sports experience are also provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the importance of leisure as a field of sociology in the United States. The article makes observation that the study of leisure has not been able to find a firm foothold among American sociologists. The most ambitious book attempting to cope with leisure in the American society has been written not by a sociologist but a political philosopher, Sebastian De Grazia in his,"Of Time, Work and Leisure." De Grazia succeeded in providing a place for leisure in American life. However no effort has been made to study family groups, groups engaged in common leisure activity and others. Leisure research like many other social research has been based on random samples. If a study of the informal organization of leisure has been neglected, the study of formal organizations has fared no better. According to the article, changes in taste are rapid in American society yet the adoption of new leisure practices has been slow. However work on leisure on various groups has begun to gain importance in the United States.

The article discusses the importance of leisure in the present world and the advent of sociology of leisure. The sociology of leisure, as a field, came into being with the publication of "The Theory of the Leisure Class," by T. Veblen in 1899. In 1958, the first anthology devoted to leisure appeared, "Mass Leisure," by E. Larrabee and R. Meyersohn. Various studies and research were carried out in France, Great Britain, U.S.S.R and other countries to find the relation between leisure and mass culture. An interest in theoretical and applied sociology has appeared in most of the societies concerned with the problems posed by economic prosperity. The role of the sociologist , as described by the article is to determine by what mechanism leisure is produced. Thus, by studying the implications of leisure for society and culture, in light of various alternatives for time utilization , the sociologists can make hypotheses based upon existing models, and orient them towards possible future models. Sociology of leisure has been divided into sections such as previsional sociology and differential sociology.

The article informs that in the face of a short working day, school are confronted with the serious responsibility of educating for leisure time. Such a responsibility can not well be delayed until a child is about to terminate his education, but must be exercised early enough to habituate him in the worthy use of his leisure. This responsibility becomes more immediate in schools which draw from poor, underprivileged neighborhoods in which problems such as the following are the rule rather than the exception: A plan for leisure-time guidance in the public schools has been evolved as a result of a three-year study in Junior High Schools in Manhattan. The plan has been cumulative and is still being constantly changed. It is not to be regarded as a model but rather as the beginning of a pattern which can be improved. While the school is interested in training the child for the worthy use of his leisure in the future when working days will be short, there are desirable results to be obtained for the present which will reflect directly in his classroom attitudes, manners, and effort. Recreational directors who have been visited have all agreed that a child's work or study habits are known to improve through a rich recreational life. Experience in leisure-time guidance shows that individual interests and needs are best met by the establishment of a friendly relationship between the child and the teacher.

The article discusses the importance of leisure as a field of sociology in Great Britain and the problems faced by it. The article makes observation that there is a lack of research in the field of sociology within a theoretical framework in Great Britain. It also rues over the fact that none of the books published on the subject of leisure has been written by a sociologist. Work has been done only on two areas, namely to assess the influence of various social factors on the content and meaning of leisure and to build a theory of relation of leisure with work. There are a small number of studies of the extent of leisure facilities provided by business enterprises and their use by the general public. The research in this field has so far been a scattered effort of a few public bodies, study groups and few academics. Apart from these bodies, the Institute of Social Research in London has undertaken a study of the leisure needs of three communities , the extent to which these needs are satisfied, and their unfulfilled needs and aspirations.

The article presents a list of books related to the subject--sociology of leisure. Some of the books mentioned are: "Totale Freizeit," by H.E. Bahr, "The Sociology of Leisure Time," by R. Bauer, "The Tyranny of Leisure," by Revel Denney, M. Mayer and W. Sams, "Leisure Spending Behaviour," by George Frisk, "The Affluent Society," by J.K. Galbraith, "Of Time, Work and Leisure," by Sebastian Grazia, "Mass Leisure," by Eric Larrabee and Rolf B. Meyersohn, "The Social Problems of an Industrial Civilization," by Elton Mayo, "Leisure, the Basis of Culture," by Jozef Pieper, "Leisure in Urbanized America," by David Riesman, "Mass Society and mass Culture," by Harold L. Wilensky, and "A Changing America at Work and Play," by A.W. Zelomer. Some other books by French authors on the subject are: "Le sens du loisir," by P. Ducasse, "Le loisir et la civilisation technicienne," by Georges Friedmann, "Travail, loisirs et société," by Alain Touraine, "Pour une sociologie des loisirs," by Jean Vial and "Problemy socializma i kommunizma," by Russian writer S.G. Strumilin.