Mass Leisure
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Tanning and foxing
What does it mean to rest in a world increasingly defined by work, consumption, and the relentless march of modernity? Mass Leisure presents a landmark collection of essays that dissects the social phenomenon of leisure in mid-twentieth-century America, assembling some of the era's most formidable sociological and cultural minds to interrogate how ordinary people spend — and struggle to spend — their time away from labor. The anthology surveys a sweeping range of topics, from the commercialization of recreation and the rise of popular culture to the psychological dimensions of idleness, painting a vivid and often unsettling portrait of a society learning, for the first time, to cope with abundance. Edited with scholarly precision and genuine intellectual curiosity, this collection stands as a foundational text in the sociology of culture, drawing on contributors whose work would go on to shape cultural studies, leisure theory, and American social criticism for decades. The editors situate each piece within a broader argument about modernity's paradoxes — that unprecedented freedom from toil has not necessarily yielded fulfillment, but rather a new kind of anxiety. For anyone curious about the roots of contemporary debates surrounding work-life balance, consumer culture, and the meaning of free time, Mass Leisure remains as provocative and illuminating today as when it first asked: what, exactly, are we doing with ourselves?
Author: Eric Larrabee And Rolf Meyersohn
Format: Hardback
Genre: Anthology
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Tanning and foxing
What does it mean to rest in a world increasingly defined by work, consumption, and the relentless march of modernity? Mass Leisure presents a landmark collection of essays that dissects the social phenomenon of leisure in mid-twentieth-century America, assembling some of the era's most formidable sociological and cultural minds to interrogate how ordinary people spend — and struggle to spend — their time away from labor. The anthology surveys a sweeping range of topics, from the commercialization of recreation and the rise of popular culture to the psychological dimensions of idleness, painting a vivid and often unsettling portrait of a society learning, for the first time, to cope with abundance. Edited with scholarly precision and genuine intellectual curiosity, this collection stands as a foundational text in the sociology of culture, drawing on contributors whose work would go on to shape cultural studies, leisure theory, and American social criticism for decades. The editors situate each piece within a broader argument about modernity's paradoxes — that unprecedented freedom from toil has not necessarily yielded fulfillment, but rather a new kind of anxiety. For anyone curious about the roots of contemporary debates surrounding work-life balance, consumer culture, and the meaning of free time, Mass Leisure remains as provocative and illuminating today as when it first asked: what, exactly, are we doing with ourselves?