Camila Kh

But the most important space of the house is at its center: the swimming pool. Lit by zenith light, it has the peculiarity of being perforated by a series of windows that connect the pool with the living room. Observing Joséphine’s body, with her dark, glowing and flawless skin moving naked in the water flooded in light, was an experience that, to... See more

by the term is socially conditioned, which makes conventional associations of'freedom', 'choice' and 'self-determination' with leisure insupportable. Leisure studies, I contend, is not so much about the examination of integrally constituted physical space or 'natural' segmented time and 'free' experience. Rather it is about what freedom, choice,... See more

Finally, what emerges most forcefully from the discussion is the sheer paradox of leisure. Leisure is a luminous goal in culture. It is associated with freedom, choice, escape and life-satisfaction. Yet it is prosaically constructed through social means and its meaning varies historically so that commonsense, essentialist definitions and treatments... See more

It is the fate of modernism to regard these responses as subjects to be remedied; and it is the condition of postmodernism to perceive the remedy as the problem. By committing ourselves to decentring leisure we emancipate leisure from the modernist burden of necessarily connoting freedom, choice, lifesatisfaction and escape with leisure. We recover... See more

Western culture presents leisure as a realizable utopia. Perhaps this is why we often feel that our leisure does not belong to us and that it eludes our grasp. For it is in the nature of utopia to be perpetually out of reach and on the edge of our existence (Bauman 1976). In struggling to achieve that longed-for state of freedom, choice and... See more

As early as the Romantic movement in the late eighteenth century one can detect a strong reaction to the narrow identification of the need to work with the workplace. Writers like Goethe, Coleridge, Wordsworth and Blake demand a more rounded model of homo faber. In particular, they associate creativity with the actions of the imagination, the... See more

The homo faber model was essentially atomistic. That is, it envisaged society as a collection of private individuals intent on maximizing personal profit as the ultimate end of existence. In this scheme of things leisure is narrowly conceived as relating primarily to those interests and activities pertaining to recharging the energies of the... See more

However, in essence he identifies four characteristics of play and relates them to the development of culture and civilization: (1) (2) Freedom. Whereas much leisure performs a cultural function by fulfilling ritual obligations or duties, play follows the dictate of voluntary enjoyment. While many play-elements have been co-opted by leisure to... See more

This is the need of play. In his classic study of play the great Dutch historian Johan Huizinga (1947) argued that culture is sub specie ludi, that is, play precedes culture. For Huizinga it must therefore be recognized as the true first premise of human existence. In his view, ritual, poetry, music, dancing, battle knowledge, wisdom and philosophy... See more