ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief overview of the history of the leisure society idea since the 1960s and 1970s. It then notes that, from around the 1980s, when the prospect of a leisure society faded, leisure studies scholars lost interest in the relationship between paid-work time and non-work time. However, as shown in Chapter 11, scholars in other fields such as economics, environmentalism, feminism and critical sociology, have recently shown an interest and have called for reduced working hours and related reforms. It is argued that, if leisure scholars are to renew their focus on work/non-work issues, it should not be under the banner ‘the coming leisure society’ but ‘the struggle for time’.
