ABSTRACT
In common with many other sociological leisure studies scholars Rojek is pessimistic about capitalism. He can’t abide the market, or at least ‘the capitalist goal of ceaseless accumulation’, which compliments Adorno and Horkheimer’s (1944) graven image of us having to accept what the ‘culture industry’ manufacturers’ offer, which is itself another rendition of Weber’s (1930) ‘disenchanted’ world that is characterized by a deficit of meaning and an insidious sense of gloom. As is well known, Weber argued that the incessant drive to the accumulation of knowledge and wealth is what underpins modernity. This is because in modern societies rationality and rationalization become all-pervasive, and leisure, like all other distinct realms of human activity, is increasingly rationalized – what Weber called the ‘iron-cage of rationalization’ – for the major needs of modern society are ‘cumulative, quantified and quantifiable’ (Heller, 1999).
