ABSTRACT
This chapter offers some conceptual and definitional underpinning for the analysis of leisure, work and other uses of time and the leisure society. The first part is concerned with the classification of time. Beginning with the late nineteenth century campaign for ‘eight hours work, eight hours rest and eight hours for what we will’, a more complex division of time is explored. The leisure1–4 system includes three categories of work and four of leisure. The significance of this framework is that any reduction, or increase, in paid-work time – the key feature of most leisure society proposals – may result in changes to any of the other nine types of time identified. The second part of the chapter considers 17 alternative time-use classification systems derived from the literature. These are divided into four groups using, respectively, functional, Aristotlean, neo-Marxist/critical and normative/good life frameworks.
