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Leisure, the State and Collective Consumption

This essay will argue that an analysis of leisure policy which elucidates the political context of state interventions in respect to leisure, and which thereby politicises a number of issues which have typically been framed in apolitical terms, is an important priority for the sociology of leisure. The discussion will briefly review the growth of a government presence in recreational provision and regulation. It will go on to situate contemporary debates about the merits of public and private provision in the context of long-standing divisions around what is the legitimate role of the state, and to relate specific policy alternatives to economic and political pressures which have led states, in all the capitalist democracies of the West, to assume increasing responsibility for the provision of social infrastructure. 1 Finally, an analysis of the current fragility of popular support for the public services will lead to a reconsideration of the 'relations of consumption' which have characterized the provision of recreational and other services within a bureaucratic framework. Common sense has seen leisure as an aspect of 'private life', a sphere of individual choices, which is not properly the object of public policy. However, recent work in social history and cultural studies (c.f. Cunningham, 1980; Waites et aI., 1982) has drawn to our attention a long history of state intervention designed to contain and regulate a variety of the entertainments traditional to popular culture. Less direct but no less significant in their effects have been regulations on land use. The enclosure and privatisation of formerly common land gradually reduced the space in which poor people could entertain themselves without admission charges of some form; and restrictions on what could be done in public