Leisure, Voluntary Action and Social Change in Britain, 1880-1939

In the final decades of the nineteenth century modernizing interpretations of leisure became of interest to social policy makers and cultural critics, producing a discourse of leisure and voluntarism that flourished until the Second World War. The free time of British citizens was increasingly seen as a sphere of social citizenship and community-building. Through major social thinkers, including William Morris, Thomas Hill Green, Bernard Bosanquet and John Hobson, leisure and voluntarism were theorized in terms of the good society. In post-First World War social reconstruction these writers remained influential as leisure became a field of social service, directed towards a new society and working through voluntary association in civic societies, settlements, new estate community-centres, village halls and church-based communities. This volume documents the parallel cultural shift from charitable philanthropy to social service and from rational recreation to leisure, teasing out intellectual influences which included social idealism, liberalism and socialism. Leisure, Robert Snape claims, has been a central and under-recognized organizing force in British communities. L ure, Voluntary Action and Social Change in Britain, 1880-1939 marks a much needed addition to the historiography of leisure and an antidote to the widely misunderstood implications of leisure to social policy today.

Product details

• Authors: Robert Snape, Snape Robert
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 05.04.2018
• EAN: 9781350003019
• ISBN: 978-1-350-00301-9
• No. of pages: 256
• Dimensions: 163 mm x 240 mm x 18 mm
• Series: Print on Demand
• Subjects: Education and learning > Teaching preparation > Vocational needs; Humanities, art, music > History > Cultural history; 20th Century, RELIGION / Institutions & Organizations, HISTORY / Social History, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / Social Policy, Social & cultural history, SPORTS & RECREATION / History, 20th century, c 1900 to c 1999, Sociology: sport & leisure, United Kingdom, Great Britain, HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain / General, Sociology: sport and leisure, Social and cultural history