Leisure and Socialization

The conceptual dichotomy between instrumental and expressive activities confines leisure to the expressive sphere and makes it dependent on more essential instrumental institutions. Ontogenetically, however, expressive experiences are prior to instrumental ones, and they serve as the criteria by which the latter are evaluated. Each generation must learn that expressive experiences are available in the instrumental roles of society, or the social system is unlikely to survive. Therefore it is essential to provide socialization into expressive experience through role models who are able to enjoy their instrumental roles. Even those social scientists who are most interested in the topic take for granted the assumption that leisure activities emerge out of, and are dependent on, the productive institutions of social systems. This assumption, rarely questioned since Huizinga argued the opposite point, has been further buttressed in recent years by the tendency to equate leisure with "expressive," as opposed to "instrumental" activities (Gordon et al.; Parsons, a, b, c). As soon as leisure is identified with expressive activities, that is, those providing immediate intrinsic rewards as opposed to delayed gratification, the logical next step is to see leisure as a nonessential, optional activity in contrast to necessary survival functions served by instrumental activities. This relationship between work and leisure is well expressed in the old fable of the grasshopper and the ant, and in popular sayings such as the following by Ben Franklin, that most eloquent apostle of the Protestant Ethic: The honest man takes his pains and then enjoys pleasure; the knave takes pleasure