ABSTRACT
This chapter contextualizes leisure in a broader critical discussion of consumer capitalism. Michelle Shir-Wise coins the term conforming individualism in order to examine and demonstrate the various ways by which consumer culture promotes a form of management of time and the self that adheres to autonomy, freedom, and choice, even as it encourages conformity to cultural models. This chapter is based on interviews with 43 women and men from a suburban, upper-middle-class town in central Israel. Its findings shed light on the centrality of consumption in many leisure practices, and on the impact of conflicting discourses on leisure and self- management in contemporary life.
