- Email: [email protected]
Leisure and Cultural Consumption: The European Perspective
Leisure and Cultural Consumption: The European Perspective Philippe Coulangeon, Observatoire Sociologique du changement (OSC), SciencesPo/CNRS, Paris, France Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Abstract Leisure and cultural consumption are today considered key components in a person’s – or a nation’s – quality of life. Despite the historic decline in the hours spent at paid labor, current trends in leisure time are unclear. Recent developments suggest a possible halt in the road toward the leisure society and a reversal of the leisure/status gradient. However, the sheer availability of leisure time is not the whole story. Scarcity in leisure time can be offset by a more intensive use of it. As discussed in this article, such use relies on financial and cultural resources which are associated with education and, to some extent, with nationality
Leisure is increasingly considered a key component of quality of life (Stiglitz et al., 2010). Leisure is classically defined as “all activities that we cannot pay somebody else to do for us and we do not really have to do at all if we do not wish to” (Burda et al., 2007: p. 1). In other words, leisure corresponds to the portion of time freed from the necessity of labor, whether paid or unpaid. Looked at this way, leisure is equivalent to resting time. But this very general perspective fails to grasp some of leisure’s qualitative aspects: How people spend their free time matters, too. Therefore, researchers interested in leisure usually focus on specific topics such as sport or cultural participation. Hereafter, leisure is thus chiefly considered in relation to cultural participation and consumption. Leisure and cultural consumption are also considered from the perspective of social inequalities in access to recreational and cultural facilities. Because many European countries devote a significant amount of public funding to culture, cultural participation is also a public policy issue. And the main concern of policy makers in that domain is precisely to ensure fair access to cultural and recreational goods.
General Trends Trends in leisure and cultural participation can be studied in various ways. First, one can rely on expenditure data. But expenditure alone can be misleading insofar as it reduces the value of leisure activities to their market price and conceals all recreational and cultural activities that do not entail any market transaction. In addition, as the data on expenditure mainly relate to households, they cannot assess individual practices. For these reasons, it is necessary to supplement expenditure data with information on the amount of time people spend on leisure and recreational activities and with data on cultural participation.
Trends in Cultural and Recreational Expenditures Cultural and recreational expenditures consist of a wide variety of goods and services: books, newspapers, cinema, museums; TV and radio taxes; goods used in amateur activities, such as drawing materials and musical instruments; audiovisual, photographic, and information processing equipment; games
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Volume 13
and toys; plants and flowers; package holidays; pets and related products. In 2005, cultural and recreational expenditure accounted on average for approximately 9% of total household expenditure in 27 European countries, ranging from 3% in Bulgaria to 13% in Sweden (see Figure 1). The ranking of European countries displays a clear South/ North gradient and, to a lesser extent, an East/West one. A first group of countries, where the share of cultural and recreational expenditure accounts for more than 10% of total expenditure of households, includes all Scandinavian countries together with Finland, Germany, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. In contrast, cultural and recreational expenditures account for less than 5% of household expenditure in Lithuania, Romania, Greece, and Bulgaria. Variations across countries reflect differences in wealth, price structures, and availability of cultural and recreational amenities. Availability, in turn, is partly dependent on the level of public funding for leisure and cultural infrastructures. But these disparities also reveal variations in intrinsic preference for leisure. This is shown in Figure 2, which plots household total expenditure against share of cultural and recreational expenditure in this total. The crossing of these two dimensions defines four groups of countries. The first consists of ones where both household total expenditure and share of the recreational and cultural expenses are above the EU27 mean: Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Malta, Austria, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. All of them are quite wealthy countries, supporting the idea that the share of total expenditure devoted to leisure and culture is primarily linked to earnings and wealth. A second group – Bulgaria, Lithuania, Romania, Estonia, Slovakia, Latvia, Poland, Hungary, and Portugal – consists of countries where both household total expenditure and share of the recreational and cultural expenses are below the EU27 mean. As these countries are on the whole poorer than those of the first group, this second configuration also supports the hypothesis that cultural and recreational expenditure share is mainly due to global wealth. The other two groups are not completely supportive of this pure wealth effect, however. The third group, reduced to one country – the Czech Republic – is characterized by the highly improbable combination of above-average share of leisure and total expenditure below the European mean. Interestingly, the final group consists of countries where a high level of
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.10420-9
837
838
Leisure and Cultural Consumption: The European Perspective
Bulgaria - BG Greece - GR Romania - RO Lithuania - LT Portugal - PT Italy - IT Cyprus (Republic) - CY Slovakia - SK Poland - PL Latvia - LV Estonia - EA Spain - SP France - FR Luxembourg - LU Hungary - HU EU27 Slovenia - Sl Belgium - BE Malta - MT Ireland - IE Czech Republic - CZ The Netherlands - NL Germany - DE Finland - FI Denmark - DK United Kingdom - UK Austria - AT Sweden - SW 0% Figure 1
2%
4%
6%
8%
10%
12%
14%
Share of recreation and culture in households expenditures in 2005 in EU27. Source: Eurostat, Household Budget Survey 2005.
Total expenditure in PPS 52 500
LU
47 500 42 500 37 500
IE CY
32 500
UK
GR 27 500
NL
BE
IT
FR
MT
EU27
SP
SW
SI
22 500
AT DE
FI
DK
PT 17 500 12 500
SK LT
7500
PL
EA LV
CZ HU
BG RO
2500 2%
4%
6%
8%
10%
12%
14%
Share of cultural and recreaonal expenditure in total expenditure (%)
Figure 2 Total household expenditure and share of cultural and recreational expenditure in 2005 – EU27. Note: households final consumption expenditure is measured in pps (purchasing power standard) Source: Eurostat, Household Budget Survey 2005.
Leisure and Cultural Consumption: The European Perspective
household expenditure coexists with a rather low share dedicated to culture and leisure: France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Cyprus, and Luxembourg. These two configurations, especially the latter, illustrate the limits of cross-national comparisons in cultural and recreational expenditure. To the extent that a substantial part of cultural and recreational amenities, although highly variable from one country to another, is publicly funded, cross-national comparisons are biased by the coexistence of market and nonmarket goods. In that sense, a relatively low level of private cultural and recreational expenditure is not necessarily synonymous with a small commitment to culture. For this reason, the household expenditure approach must be supplemented by leisure time budget and cultural participation statistics.
Trends in Leisure Time Technically speaking, leisure might be considered ‘residual time’: the time remaining after paid and unpaid work (household chores), child and personal care have been subtracted from the total amount of waking time per day. According to this criterion, however, many activities are ambiguous. Is the time devoted to reading stories to a child a matter of leisure or a matter of child care? Is time devoted to cook a meal for friends a matter of domestic chores or recreational time? To what extent can the time devoted to repairing a car, decorating a house, or doing arts and crafts at home be included in leisure time? To explicitly take into account the ambiguous nature of such activities, they are sometimes labeled ‘semi-leisure’ activities. Relying on this extended notion of leisure time, three major tendencies can be highlighted in Europe in recent decades: (1) a slight decrease in time devoted to leisure, at least in some countries; (2) an increasing variability of the distribution of time allocated to leisure; and (3) a strong heterogeneity in the cultural contents of leisure.
A Pause on the Road toward the ‘Leisure Society’ At the beginning of the 1960s, the French sociologist Joffre Dumazedier prophesied the coming of a ‘leisure society’ (Dumazedier, 1962). From the end of the nineteenth century to the third-quarter of the twentieth century, the continuous decline in the number of hours of paid work observed in many Western countries supported Dumazedier’s prediction. Since
the late 1970s, however, in many countries, the trend has not continued (Zuzanek et al., 1998; Gershuny, 2000; Chenu and Herpin, 2002). Since then, European countries have followed slightly different trends. In some (e.g., Sweden and the United Kingdom), the annual number of paid work hours started to increase at the beginning of the 1980s, whereas in others (e.g., Denmark and, to a lesser extent, France), this reversal occurred later and was less pronounced (Figure 3). The same holds true when leisure is defined as the time that remains after subtracting paid and unpaid work. Since the end of the 1970s, countries such as Norway, the Netherlands, and France experienced a significant decline in the leisure time of men. The same is true for women in Norway, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom (Gimenez-Nadal and Sevilla, 2012). As argued by Gershuny (2009), the work/leisure balance has evolved differently for men and women. In nearly all countries, men experienced an increase in the proportion of unpaid relative to paid work, whereas the opposite was true for women. Changes in leisure time may reflect these shifts between paid and unpaid labor. Furthermore, the average amount of leisure time is highly variable form one country to another. According to the Eurostat Time Use Survey, leisure time in 2000 varied from a minimum of 4:13 a day in Lithuania to a maximum of 5:46 in Norway (Figure 4). According to Gershuny (2009), this trend (which of course may be only temporary) might reflect a deeper change in the social meaning of leisure. In the industrial society, leisure was the privilege of the dominant classes who owned the means of production and exploited the workforce of nonowners. At that time, as asserted by Veblen (1899) in his leisure class theory, idleness was a correlate of wealth. But the emulation principle that governed social dynamics made leisure universally desirable: People tried to emulate the lifestyle of those just above them in the hierarchy of social prestige and power. Combined with the labor productivity gains that went along with the development of capital accumulation during the first threequarters of the twentieth century, this emulation principle led to the observed decline in the duration of paid work and the associated increase in leisure time. In contemporary Western countries, however, it is not clear whether these social dynamics are still in play. Modern capitalist companies increasingly separate ownership and management. The upshot is that for the dominant social classes, human capital has become more important than
2200
Figure 3
839
2100
Denmark
2000
Finland
1900
France
1800
Iceland
1700
Italy
1600
Norway
1500
Sweden
1400
Switzerland
1300
UK
Annual hours worked by the total employed population in selected OECD countries. Source: OECD, Employment Outlook 2006.
840
Leisure and Cultural Consumption: The European Perspective
07:00
06:00 05:00
04:00 03:00
02:00 01:00 00:00
Figure 4
Leisure time in 2000 in 14 European countries. Source: Eurostat, Time Use Survey 2000.
capital as such. Income and power increasingly derive not from ownership of capital (e.g., factories) but from highly qualified, highly paid jobs (Gershuny, 2009). In short, people at the top are working longer hours, thereby realizing the counterprophecy of a harried dominant class (Linder, 1970). The trends in leisure inequalities noted above are partially supportive of this scenario.
The Reversal of the Leisure/Status Gradient Another meaningful evolution observed in recent decades in the West in general, and in Europe in particular, is the increasingly unequal distribution of leisure since the 1970s (Gimenez-Nadal and Sevilla, 2012). This increase in leisure inequality is closely but negatively linked to the increasing inequality in earnings that occurred in the same period. Indeed, those who have benefited the most from the former are those who have suffered the most from the latter. In an increasingly knowledge-based economy, high earnings predominantly accrue to the most educated people. In other words, high incomes function as an incentive to increase the amount of paid work and reduce leisure time. By contrast, less-educated people work fewer hours, earn less, and have more leisure time (Gimenez-Nadal and Sevilla, 2012). This results in
a reversal of the leisure/status gradient: whereas in the past the wealthiest people had more leisure time than others, now they have less (Gershuny, 2009). This is not to say, though, that increased leisure time for the less wealthy is adequate compensation for their economic downgrading. One could argue that the wealthiest and most educated people compensate for the scarcity of their leisure time by using it intensively, made possible by the economic and cultural resources available to them (Coulangeon et al., 2002; Degenne et al., 2002; Gronau and Hamermesh, 2008). It might also be noted that leisure time in Europe is highly gendered. As shown in Figure 5, across Europe men have more leisure than women (about 38 min more on average). The cross-national variations display a rather clear north/south and west/east gradient. Gender differences are minimal in Norway (4 min) and maximal in Poland (56 min) and Italy (79 min).
The Cultural Paradox of Free Time Inequality in leisure is not exclusively a matter of quantity; it is also – and primarily – a matter of quality. In other words, what people do with their free time, whatever its amount, matters. This can be illustrated by the total time spent on TV and TV as share of total leisure time according to level of education. As
90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0
Figure 5 Gender differences (minutes per day) in leisure time, showing more leisure time for men, 2006. Source: OECD estimates, based on national and multinational time use surveys.
Leisure and Cultural Consumption: The European Perspective shown in Table 1, the average daily time devoted to TV ranges from 1:49 in Germany to 2:27 in Bulgaria. Across all nine countries shown in Table 1, TV accounts for roughly 40–60% of total leisure time, ranging from 39% in Spain to 58% in Bulgaria. With the exception of Slovenia and Bulgaria, daily time devoted to TV is negatively related to level of education. This negative relation is particularly strong in the United Kingdom and France, where the least educated watched TV for 1:15 and 1:20, respectively, more than the most educated. In these countries especially, TV watching appears as a particularly illegitimate practice for the culturally well-to-do (Lahire, 2004). It is also noticeable that in all countries time spent on reading increases with education (Table 2). More generally, it has been shown elsewhere that TV watching is the only cultural practice whose intensity is negatively correlated with all other cultural practices (Coulangeon and Lemel, 2009).
Table 1
841
In the nine countries shown in Table 2, daily reading time ranges from 15 min in Spain to 46 min in Finland. Time devoted to reading is strongly and positively related to education. But even among the most educated people of the most reading countries, such as Finland or Estonia, reading never represents more than 19% of total leisure time. More generally, it can be demonstrated that the cultural content of leisure time tends to be negatively correlated with quantity. On average, people who have the most leisure time have the fewest number of cultural practices (Coulangeon et al., 2002). Among the most educated people and among the upper classes, intensity and efficiency of the use of time seems to partially compensate for its relative scarcity. In that sense, access to more active and culturally intensive practices seems to be a matter of financial and cognitive resources rather than a matter of time as such. Furthermore, many recreational practices take place over a longer timescale that cannot be adequately grasped on a daily
Time spent watching TV (h:min per day) by level of education, 2000 Bulgaria
Mean time spent on TV Level 1 2:05 Level 2 2:29 Level 3–4 2:30 Level 5B 2:27 Level 5A 2:25 Mean 2:27 Share of TV in total leisure time Level 1 48% Level 2 59% Level 3–4 60% Level 5B 57% Level 5A 54% Mean 58%
Germany
Estonia
Spain
France
Lithuania
Slovenia
Finland
UK
2:22 2:15 1:53 1:49 1:28 1:49
2:52 2:43 2:16 1:59 1:49 2:16
2:25 1:55 1:34 1:29 1:21 1:53
2:37 2:03 1:54 1:27 1:17 2:01
2:34 2:51 2:17 1:52 1:48 2:16
1:31 1:53 2:00 1:42 1:34 1:57
2:46 2:20 2:08 1:57 1:50 2:13
3:03 2:35 2:14 2:02 1:48 2:23
41% 38% 34% 34% 28% 33%
49% 51% 51% 49% 43% 49%
44% 41% 35% 33% 30% 39%
53% 46% 45% 38% 32% 46%
49% 57% 56% 52% 45% 54%
30% 39% 40% 31% 33% 39%
42% 41% 40% 38% 35% 40%
50% 50% 47% 41% 38% 46%
Note: Level 1: Primary education or first stage of basic education. Level 2: Lower secondary or second stage of basic education. Level 3 and 4: Upper secondary and postsecondary nontertiary education. Level 5B: First stage of tertiary education, programs which are practically oriented and occupationally specific. Level 5A: First stage of tertiary education, tertiary programs that are theoretically based/research preparatory or giving access to professions with high skill requirements. Source: Eurostat, Time Use Survey 2000.
Table 2
Time spent reading (h:min per day) by level of education, 2000 Bulgaria
Germany
Mean time spent on reading Level 1 0:03 0:20 Level 2 0:09 0:33 Level 3–4 0:19 0:35 Level 5B 0:28 0:38 Level 5A 0:36 0:43 Mean 0:18 0:38 Share of reading in total leisure time Level 1 1% 6% Level 2 4% 9% Level 3–4 8% 11% Level 5B 11% 12% Level 5A 13% 14% Mean 7% 12% Source: Eurostat, Time Use Survey 2000.
Estonia
Spain
France
Lithuania
Slovenia
Finland
UK
0:32 0:35 0:35 0:38 0:45 0:37
0:09 0:12 0:16 0:24 0:30 0:15
0:22 0:25 0:18 0:25 0:34 0:23
0:18 0:20 0:22 0:22 0:32 0:23
0:12 0:14 0:23 0:39 0:36 0:23
0:49 0:39 0:41 0:48 0:59 0:46
0:31 0:22 0:20 0:29 0:32 0:26
9% 11% 13% 16% 18% 13%
3% 4% 6% 9% 11% 5%
7% 9% 7% 11% 14% 9%
6% 7% 9% 10% 13% 9%
4% 5% 8% 12% 12% 8%
12% 12% 13% 16% 19% 14%
9% 7% 7% 10% 11% 8%
842
Leisure and Cultural Consumption: The European Perspective
basis. For this reason, beyond the time–budget approach, data on cultural and recreational practices may provide further insight.
Trends in Cultural Participation Cultural facilities have different rates of attendance. As shown in Figure 6, about 50% of Europeans visit historical sites or
Historical site
50.7%
Cinema
46.1%
Concert
38.7%
Museum/gallery
38.3%
Public library
33.3%
Theater
31.3%
Ballet/dance/opera 0%
18.5%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
Figure 6 Attendance at cultural facilities, EU27, 2013. Note: proportion of respondents who have been at least one time in each of the facilities in the year preceding the survey. Source :Eurostat, Eurobarometer 79.2, 2013. Table 3
Ballet, dance performance, or opera attendance, 2013
Portugal Greece Poland Romania Bulgaria Hungary Cyprus (Republic) Slovakia Slovenia Spain Malta Czech Republic Finland Italy EU27 Austria Germany – West Ireland United Kingdom Belgium Germany – East Lithuania The Netherlands Latvia Estonia France Denmark Luxembourg Sweden
attend the cinema at least once a year, whereas other cultural facilities are less frequently attended. Beyond this general statement, cross-national comparison displays huge discrepancies across Europe. For example, on average 18.5% of Europeans attend a ballet, dance performance, or opera at least once a year, but, as shown in Table 3, the rate varies from 7.5% in Portugal to 34.3% in Sweden. Again, western and northern European countries differ from eastern and southern ones. One might suspect that these variations may be due to differences in the availability of cultural facilities, which is itself highly dependent on degree of urbanization. However, as Table 3 shows, when the data are examined separately for rural area, middle town and large town, the ranking of the countries remains much the same. Differences between countries are not reducible to their level of urbanization, therefore, but reflect dissimilarities in global wealth and supply of cultural amenities. In that sense, it is particularly noticeable that, except for Estonia, the countries where the contrast between rural and urban areas is the strongest (as shown by the odds ratio in the right-hand column) are also those with the smallest rate of attendance overall. The contrasts between European nations remain consistent when we turn to more common cultural practices, such as movie going (Table 4). The ranking is similar, as is the Table 4
Cinema attendance, 2013
Rural area
Middle town
Large town
Mean
OR
(%)
Rural area
Middle town
Large town
Mean
OR
5.65 5.42 6.6 5.42 4.35 7.65 2.9 12.12 11.47 12.64 14.72 16.56 13.61 14.29 14.43 16.36 17.59 14.37 21.96 18.2 15.38 17.32 20.49 19.24 14.44 23.25 19.42 30.45 28.46
9.92 14.72 7.87 12.26 11.69 10.82 22.16 13.73 17.02 18.5 15.87 14.86 16.95 18.11 18.66 19.24 18.03 17.53 20.22 22.87 18.29 18.49 23.37 20.06 20.5 23.46 26.71 28.26 33.41
6.51 11.07 17.63 18.89 15.59 15.93 9.34 23.13 18.4 17.03 25 20.73 23.86 21.13 23.19 21.97 24.54 25.2 21.57 25.53 32.78 34.98 28.63 33.23 40.38 30.88 32.23 34.55 40.8
7.5 10.1 10.1 11.4 11.6 11.6 12.3 14.3 14.9 15.1 16.2 16.9 17.1 18.1 18.5 19.1 19.4 19.4 21.1 21.5 22.5 23.4 23.5 24 24.4 24.9 26.1 29.9 34.3
1.2 2.2 3.0 4.1 4.1 2.3 3.4 2.2 1.7 1.4 1.9 1.3 2.0 1.6 1.8 1.4 1.5 2.0 1.0 1.5 2.7 2.6 1.6 2.1 4.0 1.5 2.0 1.2 1.7
Romania Portugal Bulgaria Hungary Cyprus (Republic) Slovakia Greece Poland Slovenia Lithuania Malta Estonia Latvia Finland EU27 Germany – East Spain Czech Republic Belgium Italy Germany – West United Kingdom Austria Luxembourg France Ireland The Netherlands Sweden Denmark
10.6 15.5 13.8 22.9 19.6 31.7 25.3 26.7 34.4 25.2 37.1 27.8 30.9 34.7 38.0 41.9 40.5 42.7 48.6 47.0 52.2 47.8 52.0 59.1 54.8 52.1 58.1 56.5 66.2
20.7 33.6 13.7 29.5 41.1 32.7 35.6 31.8 44.4 38.1 48.4 40.1 43.0 40.7 47.9 38.6 54.2 48.1 52.1 52.9 57.9 58.7 61.2 60.0 63.0 63.2 67.1 67.0 69.8
31.6 31.6 39.5 40.9 34.6 48.5 40.2 55.0 43.6 54.5 39.1 57.1 51.6 55.7 53.7 60.0 55.9 52.4 53.7 61.5 59.3 61.1 65.6 61.8 68.6 69.2 71.0 78.3 77.7
19.8 25.9 26.2 31.5 32.9 34.4 35.3 36.3 39.9 40.1 40.2 40.8 41.3 41.5 46.1 46.4 47.2 47.6 51.0 53.7 56.3 56.7 59.2 59.8 61.0 61.8 64.4 67.7 70.7
2.1 1.9 2.2 1.5 2.0 1.1 1.6 1.6 1.3 2.0 1.1 1.8 1.6 1.3 1.4 1.2 1.3 1.2 1.1 1.3 1.2 1.4 1.3 1.0 1.3 1.5 1.3 1.6 1.2
Note: The figures above represent the percentage of respondents who attended at least one ballet, dance performance, or opera in the year preceding the survey. OR ¼ odds ratio (for explanation, see footnote 1). Source: Eurostat, Eurobarometer 79.2, 2013.
Note: The figures above represent the percentage of respondents who attended the cinema at least once in the year preceding the survey. OR ¼ odds ratio (see footnote 1). Source: Eurostat, Eurobarometer 79.2, 2013.
Leisure and Cultural Consumption: The European Perspective
contrast between western and northern Europe, on the one hand, and southern and eastern Europe, on the other. The most significant exceptions are Estonia and Latvia, which rank much higher on ballet, dance performance, or opera than on cinema. In addition, the differences between urban and rural areas are much smaller for cinema than for ballet, dance, and opera. All in all, cross-national differences in access to cultural amenities are quite similar in the realm of mass culture and in the elite culture domain. Differences between countries appear to be more a matter of global affluence than cultural legitimacy, in Bourdieu’s sense of the notion (Bourdieu, 1984[1979]). Across Europe, access to cultural facilities displays huge inequalities with respect to social class, education, age, and gender. Relative to other groups, professionals display a higher commitment to cultural participation, as shown by the values of the cultural participation index reproduced in Table 5. The countries’ ranking on this index is consistent with previous results, contrasting once again the same subgroups. It is also again noticeable that the relative
Table 5
843
distance between groups, as measured by the ratio of the professionals’ score to the manual workers’ score, is highest in countries with the lowest average scores, such as Portugal and Hungary, and lowest in countries with the highest average scores, such as Sweden, Finland, and Denmark. These three last countries are also known to be more egalitarian in many other respects (income, wealth, health, education). The variations in the magnitude of the betweengroup differences in cultural participation thus suggest that culture is a stronger social marker in unequal societies than in more egalitarian ones (Hjellbrekke and Korsnes, 2014). These variations might also be due to the impact of educational and cultural policies. Finally, it is worth noting that the cultural participation scores of the professionals are much more homogeneous across nations than the scores of other groups, as shown by the relative standard deviations in the bottom row of Table 5. Note that these values are lowest for the professionals, highest for farmers and fisherman, and twice as high for manual workers than for professionals. European elites appear more culturally homogeneous than the rest of the population.
Cultural Participation Index by occupation, 2013
Portugal Greece Romania Cyprus (Republic) Hungary Poland Bulgaria Italy Slovakia Malta Spain Czech Republic EU27 Austria Belgium Germany –West Germany – East Lithuania Slovenia Ireland France Latvia Finland Luxembourg United Kingdom Estonia The Netherlands Denmark Sweden RSD
FARM
SSE
PROF
MID
NMWkrs
MWkrs
Total
Ratio PROF/MWkrs
3.1 1.0 1.7 0.8 2.2 2.0 1.5 1.8 7.5 6.5 4.5 7.6 3.8 4.2 4.8 2.8 10.3 7.0 4.7 9.1 6.4 9.0 3.9 6.4 5.7 7.0 9.1 7.5 7.7 0.54
3.3 3.0 5.0 3.6 6.7 5.9 4.6 5.0 6.3 6.5 6.3 6.2 6.2 8.0 6.2 7.0 3.9 8.5 9.1 10.7 9.2 9.1 8.1 9.3 9.6 10.0 8.3 10.3 9.9 0.32
8.1 8.0 8.5 7.1 11.1 8.6 8.5 9.2 9.1 11.3 10.4 9.3 11.0 10.5 11.6 10.8 11.1 10.9 11.9 11.1 13.5 10.7 9.4 12.1 11.5 12.0 12.5 13.6 13.7 0.17
7.2 6.3 4.2 5.6 7.0 8.8 6.8 8.3 8.7 9.0 11.1 10.5 10.3 9.6 9.9 8.8 9.9 9.6 9.8 10.6 10.7 10.8 11.1 10.6 10.8 12.3 11.4 13.6 14.3 0.23
4.8 5.0 5.1 4.6 5.9 5.9 6.0 6.2 6.9 7.6 8.2 7.4 8.1 7.5 8.5 7.8 7.9 8.4 8.3 7.7 8.2 8.8 9.7 9.2 10.0 9.9 10.9 11.2 12.4 0.25
2.3 2.5 2.9 3.0 3.0 3.3 3.1 3.7 4.0 4.6 5.4 4.8 4.7 5.0 4.2 4.7 4.8 5.4 5.5 5.9 5.4 6.1 7.0 5.9 6.7 6.8 7.0 8.3 9.6 0.35
3.7 4.1 4.3 4.5 4.8 5.2 5.3 5.6 6.5 6.5 6.8 7.4 7.5 7.5 7.5 7.9 8.0 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.7 8.7 8.8 9.1 9.2 9.4 10.7 11.1 12.8 0.30
3.6 3.3 2.9 2.4 3.7 2.6 2.7 2.5 2.3 2.5 1.9 2.0 2.3 2.1 2.8 2.3 2.3 2.0 2.2 1.9 2.5 1.8 1.3 2.0 1.7 1.8 1.8 1.6 1.4
Note: The relative standard deviation coefficient (RSD) corresponds to the standard deviation divided by the mean of the values of the cultural index across the 27 nations. FARM: Farmers and fishermen. SSE: Small self-employed. PROF: Professionals, business proprietors, owners, employed professionals, top managers. MID: Middle managers, supervisors. NMWkrs: Nonmanual routine workers. MWkrs: Manual routine workers. Source: Eurostat, Eurobarometer 79.2, 2013.
844
Leisure and Cultural Consumption: The European Perspective
Summary and Conclusions Regarding leisure and cultural consumption in Europe, three main tendencies deserve to be underlined. First, time budget surveys suggest a possible halt on the road toward the so-called leisure society. Second, and as shown repeatedly in this article, variations in leisure and cultural consumption vary significantly from one country to another. Third, leisure time remains subjected to significant inequalities, especially in terms of class, education, and gender. The pattern of inequalities is, however, complex. On average, the most advantaged in leisure time are the most disadvantaged in economic, educational, and cultural resources. As demonstrated by Marie Jahoda, Paul F. Lazarsfeld, and Hans Zeisel about the Marienthal unemployed (Jahoda et al., 1971[1932]) – and dramatically illustrated today in some European countries grappling with massive unemployment – overabundant free time is not necessarily synonymous with true leisure. Leisure time cannot be an end in itself if people cannot afford to enjoy it.
See also: Cultural Participation, Trends in; Cultural Policy Regimes in Western Europe; Formal Methods of Cultural Analysis; Globalization and World Culture; Leisure and Cultural Consumption: US Perspective; Social Inequality in Cultural Consumption Patterns.
Bibliography Bourdieu, P., 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA (Original work published 1979). Burda, M., Hamermesh, D.S., Weil, P., 2007. Total Work, Gender and Social Norms. National Bureau of Economic Research. Chenu, A., Herpin, N., 2002. Une pause dans la marche vers la civilisation des loisirs? [A break in the march towards the leisure civilization?]. Économie et statistique 352 (1), 15–37.
Coulangeon, P., Lemel, Y., 2009. The homology thesis: distinction revisited. In: Robson, K., Sanders, C. (Eds.), Quantifying Theory: Pierre Bourdieu. Springer, pp. 47–60. Coulangeon, P., Menger, P.-M., Roharik, I., 2002. Les loisirs des actifs: un reflet de la stratification sociale [Workers’ leisure time: a reflection of social stratification]. Économie et statistique 352 (1), 39–55. Degenne, A., Lebeaux, M.-O., Marry, C., 2002. Les usages du temps: cumuls d’activités et rythmes de vie [How time is put to use: accumulating activities and lifestyles]. Économie et statistique 352 (1), 81–99. Dumazedier, J., 1962. Vers une civilisation du loisir? [Towards a Society of Leisure?]. Le Seuil, Paris. Esping-Andersen, G., 1990. The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Polity Press, Cambridg UK. Gershuny, J., 2000. Changing Times: Work and Leisure in Postindustrial Society. Oxford University Press. Gershuny, J., 2009. Veblen in reverse: evidence from the multinational time-use archive. Social Indicators Research 93 (1), 37–45. Gimenez-Nadal, J.I., Sevilla, A., 2012. Trends in time allocation: a cross-country analysis. European Economic Review 56 (6), 1338–1359. Gronau, R., Hamermesh, D.S., 2008. The demand for variety: a household production perspective. The Review of Economics and Statistics 90 (3), 562–572. Hjellbrekke, J., Korsnes, O., 2014. Cultural distinctions in an egalitarian society. In: Coulangeon, P., Duval, J. (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Bourdieu’s ‘Distinction’. Routledge, Oxford. Jahoda, M., Lazarsfeld, P., Zeisel, H., 1971[1932]. Marienthal: The Sociography of an Unemployed Community. Aldine, Chicago. Lahire, B., 2004. La culture des individus: dissonances culturelles et distinction de soi [The Culture of individuals. Cultural dissonance and self distinction]. La découverte, Paris. Linder, S.B., 1970. The Harried Leisure Class. Columbia University Press, New York. Stiglitz, J.E., Sen, A., Fitoussi, J.-P., 2010. Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress. Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, Paris. Veblen, T., 1899. The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions. Macmillan, New York. Zuzanek, J., Beckers, T., Peters, P., 1998. The ‘harried leisure class’ revisited: Dutch and Canadian trends in the use of time from the 1970s to the 1990s. Leisure Studies 17 (1), 1–19.
Abstract Leisure and cultural consumption are today considered key components in a person’s – or a nation’s – quality of life. Despite the historic decline in the hours spent at paid labor, current trends in leisure time are unclear. Recent developments suggest a possible halt in the road toward the leisure society and a reversal of the leisure/status gradient. However, the sheer availability of leisure time is not the whole story. Scarcity in leisure time can be offset by a more intensive use of it. As discussed in this article, such use relies on financial and cultural resources which are associated with education and, to some extent, with nationality
Leisure is increasingly considered a key component of quality of life (Stiglitz et al., 2010). Leisure is classically defined as “all activities that we cannot pay somebody else to do for us and we do not really have to do at all if we do not wish to” (Burda et al., 2007: p. 1). In other words, leisure corresponds to the portion of time freed from the necessity of labor, whether paid or unpaid. Looked at this way, leisure is equivalent to resting time. But this very general perspective fails to grasp some of leisure’s qualitative aspects: How people spend their free time matters, too. Therefore, researchers interested in leisure usually focus on specific topics such as sport or cultural participation. Hereafter, leisure is thus chiefly considered in relation to cultural participation and consumption. Leisure and cultural consumption are also considered from the perspective of social inequalities in access to recreational and cultural facilities. Because many European countries devote a significant amount of public funding to culture, cultural participation is also a public policy issue. And the main concern of policy makers in that domain is precisely to ensure fair access to cultural and recreational goods.
General Trends Trends in leisure and cultural participation can be studied in various ways. First, one can rely on expenditure data. But expenditure alone can be misleading insofar as it reduces the value of leisure activities to their market price and conceals all recreational and cultural activities that do not entail any market transaction. In addition, as the data on expenditure mainly relate to households, they cannot assess individual practices. For these reasons, it is necessary to supplement expenditure data with information on the amount of time people spend on leisure and recreational activities and with data on cultural participation.
Trends in Cultural and Recreational Expenditures Cultural and recreational expenditures consist of a wide variety of goods and services: books, newspapers, cinema, museums; TV and radio taxes; goods used in amateur activities, such as drawing materials and musical instruments; audiovisual, photographic, and information processing equipment; games
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Volume 13
and toys; plants and flowers; package holidays; pets and related products. In 2005, cultural and recreational expenditure accounted on average for approximately 9% of total household expenditure in 27 European countries, ranging from 3% in Bulgaria to 13% in Sweden (see Figure 1). The ranking of European countries displays a clear South/ North gradient and, to a lesser extent, an East/West one. A first group of countries, where the share of cultural and recreational expenditure accounts for more than 10% of total expenditure of households, includes all Scandinavian countries together with Finland, Germany, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. In contrast, cultural and recreational expenditures account for less than 5% of household expenditure in Lithuania, Romania, Greece, and Bulgaria. Variations across countries reflect differences in wealth, price structures, and availability of cultural and recreational amenities. Availability, in turn, is partly dependent on the level of public funding for leisure and cultural infrastructures. But these disparities also reveal variations in intrinsic preference for leisure. This is shown in Figure 2, which plots household total expenditure against share of cultural and recreational expenditure in this total. The crossing of these two dimensions defines four groups of countries. The first consists of ones where both household total expenditure and share of the recreational and cultural expenses are above the EU27 mean: Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Malta, Austria, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. All of them are quite wealthy countries, supporting the idea that the share of total expenditure devoted to leisure and culture is primarily linked to earnings and wealth. A second group – Bulgaria, Lithuania, Romania, Estonia, Slovakia, Latvia, Poland, Hungary, and Portugal – consists of countries where both household total expenditure and share of the recreational and cultural expenses are below the EU27 mean. As these countries are on the whole poorer than those of the first group, this second configuration also supports the hypothesis that cultural and recreational expenditure share is mainly due to global wealth. The other two groups are not completely supportive of this pure wealth effect, however. The third group, reduced to one country – the Czech Republic – is characterized by the highly improbable combination of above-average share of leisure and total expenditure below the European mean. Interestingly, the final group consists of countries where a high level of
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.10420-9
837
838
Leisure and Cultural Consumption: The European Perspective
Bulgaria - BG Greece - GR Romania - RO Lithuania - LT Portugal - PT Italy - IT Cyprus (Republic) - CY Slovakia - SK Poland - PL Latvia - LV Estonia - EA Spain - SP France - FR Luxembourg - LU Hungary - HU EU27 Slovenia - Sl Belgium - BE Malta - MT Ireland - IE Czech Republic - CZ The Netherlands - NL Germany - DE Finland - FI Denmark - DK United Kingdom - UK Austria - AT Sweden - SW 0% Figure 1
2%
4%
6%
8%
10%
12%
14%
Share of recreation and culture in households expenditures in 2005 in EU27. Source: Eurostat, Household Budget Survey 2005.
Total expenditure in PPS 52 500
LU
47 500 42 500 37 500
IE CY
32 500
UK
GR 27 500
NL
BE
IT
FR
MT
EU27
SP
SW
SI
22 500
AT DE
FI
DK
PT 17 500 12 500
SK LT
7500
PL
EA LV
CZ HU
BG RO
2500 2%
4%
6%
8%
10%
12%
14%
Share of cultural and recreaonal expenditure in total expenditure (%)
Figure 2 Total household expenditure and share of cultural and recreational expenditure in 2005 – EU27. Note: households final consumption expenditure is measured in pps (purchasing power standard) Source: Eurostat, Household Budget Survey 2005.
Leisure and Cultural Consumption: The European Perspective
household expenditure coexists with a rather low share dedicated to culture and leisure: France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Cyprus, and Luxembourg. These two configurations, especially the latter, illustrate the limits of cross-national comparisons in cultural and recreational expenditure. To the extent that a substantial part of cultural and recreational amenities, although highly variable from one country to another, is publicly funded, cross-national comparisons are biased by the coexistence of market and nonmarket goods. In that sense, a relatively low level of private cultural and recreational expenditure is not necessarily synonymous with a small commitment to culture. For this reason, the household expenditure approach must be supplemented by leisure time budget and cultural participation statistics.
Trends in Leisure Time Technically speaking, leisure might be considered ‘residual time’: the time remaining after paid and unpaid work (household chores), child and personal care have been subtracted from the total amount of waking time per day. According to this criterion, however, many activities are ambiguous. Is the time devoted to reading stories to a child a matter of leisure or a matter of child care? Is time devoted to cook a meal for friends a matter of domestic chores or recreational time? To what extent can the time devoted to repairing a car, decorating a house, or doing arts and crafts at home be included in leisure time? To explicitly take into account the ambiguous nature of such activities, they are sometimes labeled ‘semi-leisure’ activities. Relying on this extended notion of leisure time, three major tendencies can be highlighted in Europe in recent decades: (1) a slight decrease in time devoted to leisure, at least in some countries; (2) an increasing variability of the distribution of time allocated to leisure; and (3) a strong heterogeneity in the cultural contents of leisure.
A Pause on the Road toward the ‘Leisure Society’ At the beginning of the 1960s, the French sociologist Joffre Dumazedier prophesied the coming of a ‘leisure society’ (Dumazedier, 1962). From the end of the nineteenth century to the third-quarter of the twentieth century, the continuous decline in the number of hours of paid work observed in many Western countries supported Dumazedier’s prediction. Since
the late 1970s, however, in many countries, the trend has not continued (Zuzanek et al., 1998; Gershuny, 2000; Chenu and Herpin, 2002). Since then, European countries have followed slightly different trends. In some (e.g., Sweden and the United Kingdom), the annual number of paid work hours started to increase at the beginning of the 1980s, whereas in others (e.g., Denmark and, to a lesser extent, France), this reversal occurred later and was less pronounced (Figure 3). The same holds true when leisure is defined as the time that remains after subtracting paid and unpaid work. Since the end of the 1970s, countries such as Norway, the Netherlands, and France experienced a significant decline in the leisure time of men. The same is true for women in Norway, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom (Gimenez-Nadal and Sevilla, 2012). As argued by Gershuny (2009), the work/leisure balance has evolved differently for men and women. In nearly all countries, men experienced an increase in the proportion of unpaid relative to paid work, whereas the opposite was true for women. Changes in leisure time may reflect these shifts between paid and unpaid labor. Furthermore, the average amount of leisure time is highly variable form one country to another. According to the Eurostat Time Use Survey, leisure time in 2000 varied from a minimum of 4:13 a day in Lithuania to a maximum of 5:46 in Norway (Figure 4). According to Gershuny (2009), this trend (which of course may be only temporary) might reflect a deeper change in the social meaning of leisure. In the industrial society, leisure was the privilege of the dominant classes who owned the means of production and exploited the workforce of nonowners. At that time, as asserted by Veblen (1899) in his leisure class theory, idleness was a correlate of wealth. But the emulation principle that governed social dynamics made leisure universally desirable: People tried to emulate the lifestyle of those just above them in the hierarchy of social prestige and power. Combined with the labor productivity gains that went along with the development of capital accumulation during the first threequarters of the twentieth century, this emulation principle led to the observed decline in the duration of paid work and the associated increase in leisure time. In contemporary Western countries, however, it is not clear whether these social dynamics are still in play. Modern capitalist companies increasingly separate ownership and management. The upshot is that for the dominant social classes, human capital has become more important than
2200
Figure 3
839
2100
Denmark
2000
Finland
1900
France
1800
Iceland
1700
Italy
1600
Norway
1500
Sweden
1400
Switzerland
1300
UK
Annual hours worked by the total employed population in selected OECD countries. Source: OECD, Employment Outlook 2006.
840
Leisure and Cultural Consumption: The European Perspective
07:00
06:00 05:00
04:00 03:00
02:00 01:00 00:00
Figure 4
Leisure time in 2000 in 14 European countries. Source: Eurostat, Time Use Survey 2000.
capital as such. Income and power increasingly derive not from ownership of capital (e.g., factories) but from highly qualified, highly paid jobs (Gershuny, 2009). In short, people at the top are working longer hours, thereby realizing the counterprophecy of a harried dominant class (Linder, 1970). The trends in leisure inequalities noted above are partially supportive of this scenario.
The Reversal of the Leisure/Status Gradient Another meaningful evolution observed in recent decades in the West in general, and in Europe in particular, is the increasingly unequal distribution of leisure since the 1970s (Gimenez-Nadal and Sevilla, 2012). This increase in leisure inequality is closely but negatively linked to the increasing inequality in earnings that occurred in the same period. Indeed, those who have benefited the most from the former are those who have suffered the most from the latter. In an increasingly knowledge-based economy, high earnings predominantly accrue to the most educated people. In other words, high incomes function as an incentive to increase the amount of paid work and reduce leisure time. By contrast, less-educated people work fewer hours, earn less, and have more leisure time (Gimenez-Nadal and Sevilla, 2012). This results in
a reversal of the leisure/status gradient: whereas in the past the wealthiest people had more leisure time than others, now they have less (Gershuny, 2009). This is not to say, though, that increased leisure time for the less wealthy is adequate compensation for their economic downgrading. One could argue that the wealthiest and most educated people compensate for the scarcity of their leisure time by using it intensively, made possible by the economic and cultural resources available to them (Coulangeon et al., 2002; Degenne et al., 2002; Gronau and Hamermesh, 2008). It might also be noted that leisure time in Europe is highly gendered. As shown in Figure 5, across Europe men have more leisure than women (about 38 min more on average). The cross-national variations display a rather clear north/south and west/east gradient. Gender differences are minimal in Norway (4 min) and maximal in Poland (56 min) and Italy (79 min).
The Cultural Paradox of Free Time Inequality in leisure is not exclusively a matter of quantity; it is also – and primarily – a matter of quality. In other words, what people do with their free time, whatever its amount, matters. This can be illustrated by the total time spent on TV and TV as share of total leisure time according to level of education. As
90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0
Figure 5 Gender differences (minutes per day) in leisure time, showing more leisure time for men, 2006. Source: OECD estimates, based on national and multinational time use surveys.
Leisure and Cultural Consumption: The European Perspective shown in Table 1, the average daily time devoted to TV ranges from 1:49 in Germany to 2:27 in Bulgaria. Across all nine countries shown in Table 1, TV accounts for roughly 40–60% of total leisure time, ranging from 39% in Spain to 58% in Bulgaria. With the exception of Slovenia and Bulgaria, daily time devoted to TV is negatively related to level of education. This negative relation is particularly strong in the United Kingdom and France, where the least educated watched TV for 1:15 and 1:20, respectively, more than the most educated. In these countries especially, TV watching appears as a particularly illegitimate practice for the culturally well-to-do (Lahire, 2004). It is also noticeable that in all countries time spent on reading increases with education (Table 2). More generally, it has been shown elsewhere that TV watching is the only cultural practice whose intensity is negatively correlated with all other cultural practices (Coulangeon and Lemel, 2009).
Table 1
841
In the nine countries shown in Table 2, daily reading time ranges from 15 min in Spain to 46 min in Finland. Time devoted to reading is strongly and positively related to education. But even among the most educated people of the most reading countries, such as Finland or Estonia, reading never represents more than 19% of total leisure time. More generally, it can be demonstrated that the cultural content of leisure time tends to be negatively correlated with quantity. On average, people who have the most leisure time have the fewest number of cultural practices (Coulangeon et al., 2002). Among the most educated people and among the upper classes, intensity and efficiency of the use of time seems to partially compensate for its relative scarcity. In that sense, access to more active and culturally intensive practices seems to be a matter of financial and cognitive resources rather than a matter of time as such. Furthermore, many recreational practices take place over a longer timescale that cannot be adequately grasped on a daily
Time spent watching TV (h:min per day) by level of education, 2000 Bulgaria
Mean time spent on TV Level 1 2:05 Level 2 2:29 Level 3–4 2:30 Level 5B 2:27 Level 5A 2:25 Mean 2:27 Share of TV in total leisure time Level 1 48% Level 2 59% Level 3–4 60% Level 5B 57% Level 5A 54% Mean 58%
Germany
Estonia
Spain
France
Lithuania
Slovenia
Finland
UK
2:22 2:15 1:53 1:49 1:28 1:49
2:52 2:43 2:16 1:59 1:49 2:16
2:25 1:55 1:34 1:29 1:21 1:53
2:37 2:03 1:54 1:27 1:17 2:01
2:34 2:51 2:17 1:52 1:48 2:16
1:31 1:53 2:00 1:42 1:34 1:57
2:46 2:20 2:08 1:57 1:50 2:13
3:03 2:35 2:14 2:02 1:48 2:23
41% 38% 34% 34% 28% 33%
49% 51% 51% 49% 43% 49%
44% 41% 35% 33% 30% 39%
53% 46% 45% 38% 32% 46%
49% 57% 56% 52% 45% 54%
30% 39% 40% 31% 33% 39%
42% 41% 40% 38% 35% 40%
50% 50% 47% 41% 38% 46%
Note: Level 1: Primary education or first stage of basic education. Level 2: Lower secondary or second stage of basic education. Level 3 and 4: Upper secondary and postsecondary nontertiary education. Level 5B: First stage of tertiary education, programs which are practically oriented and occupationally specific. Level 5A: First stage of tertiary education, tertiary programs that are theoretically based/research preparatory or giving access to professions with high skill requirements. Source: Eurostat, Time Use Survey 2000.
Table 2
Time spent reading (h:min per day) by level of education, 2000 Bulgaria
Germany
Mean time spent on reading Level 1 0:03 0:20 Level 2 0:09 0:33 Level 3–4 0:19 0:35 Level 5B 0:28 0:38 Level 5A 0:36 0:43 Mean 0:18 0:38 Share of reading in total leisure time Level 1 1% 6% Level 2 4% 9% Level 3–4 8% 11% Level 5B 11% 12% Level 5A 13% 14% Mean 7% 12% Source: Eurostat, Time Use Survey 2000.
Estonia
Spain
France
Lithuania
Slovenia
Finland
UK
0:32 0:35 0:35 0:38 0:45 0:37
0:09 0:12 0:16 0:24 0:30 0:15
0:22 0:25 0:18 0:25 0:34 0:23
0:18 0:20 0:22 0:22 0:32 0:23
0:12 0:14 0:23 0:39 0:36 0:23
0:49 0:39 0:41 0:48 0:59 0:46
0:31 0:22 0:20 0:29 0:32 0:26
9% 11% 13% 16% 18% 13%
3% 4% 6% 9% 11% 5%
7% 9% 7% 11% 14% 9%
6% 7% 9% 10% 13% 9%
4% 5% 8% 12% 12% 8%
12% 12% 13% 16% 19% 14%
9% 7% 7% 10% 11% 8%
842
Leisure and Cultural Consumption: The European Perspective
basis. For this reason, beyond the time–budget approach, data on cultural and recreational practices may provide further insight.
Trends in Cultural Participation Cultural facilities have different rates of attendance. As shown in Figure 6, about 50% of Europeans visit historical sites or
Historical site
50.7%
Cinema
46.1%
Concert
38.7%
Museum/gallery
38.3%
Public library
33.3%
Theater
31.3%
Ballet/dance/opera 0%
18.5%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
Figure 6 Attendance at cultural facilities, EU27, 2013. Note: proportion of respondents who have been at least one time in each of the facilities in the year preceding the survey. Source :Eurostat, Eurobarometer 79.2, 2013. Table 3
Ballet, dance performance, or opera attendance, 2013
Portugal Greece Poland Romania Bulgaria Hungary Cyprus (Republic) Slovakia Slovenia Spain Malta Czech Republic Finland Italy EU27 Austria Germany – West Ireland United Kingdom Belgium Germany – East Lithuania The Netherlands Latvia Estonia France Denmark Luxembourg Sweden
attend the cinema at least once a year, whereas other cultural facilities are less frequently attended. Beyond this general statement, cross-national comparison displays huge discrepancies across Europe. For example, on average 18.5% of Europeans attend a ballet, dance performance, or opera at least once a year, but, as shown in Table 3, the rate varies from 7.5% in Portugal to 34.3% in Sweden. Again, western and northern European countries differ from eastern and southern ones. One might suspect that these variations may be due to differences in the availability of cultural facilities, which is itself highly dependent on degree of urbanization. However, as Table 3 shows, when the data are examined separately for rural area, middle town and large town, the ranking of the countries remains much the same. Differences between countries are not reducible to their level of urbanization, therefore, but reflect dissimilarities in global wealth and supply of cultural amenities. In that sense, it is particularly noticeable that, except for Estonia, the countries where the contrast between rural and urban areas is the strongest (as shown by the odds ratio in the right-hand column) are also those with the smallest rate of attendance overall. The contrasts between European nations remain consistent when we turn to more common cultural practices, such as movie going (Table 4). The ranking is similar, as is the Table 4
Cinema attendance, 2013
Rural area
Middle town
Large town
Mean
OR
(%)
Rural area
Middle town
Large town
Mean
OR
5.65 5.42 6.6 5.42 4.35 7.65 2.9 12.12 11.47 12.64 14.72 16.56 13.61 14.29 14.43 16.36 17.59 14.37 21.96 18.2 15.38 17.32 20.49 19.24 14.44 23.25 19.42 30.45 28.46
9.92 14.72 7.87 12.26 11.69 10.82 22.16 13.73 17.02 18.5 15.87 14.86 16.95 18.11 18.66 19.24 18.03 17.53 20.22 22.87 18.29 18.49 23.37 20.06 20.5 23.46 26.71 28.26 33.41
6.51 11.07 17.63 18.89 15.59 15.93 9.34 23.13 18.4 17.03 25 20.73 23.86 21.13 23.19 21.97 24.54 25.2 21.57 25.53 32.78 34.98 28.63 33.23 40.38 30.88 32.23 34.55 40.8
7.5 10.1 10.1 11.4 11.6 11.6 12.3 14.3 14.9 15.1 16.2 16.9 17.1 18.1 18.5 19.1 19.4 19.4 21.1 21.5 22.5 23.4 23.5 24 24.4 24.9 26.1 29.9 34.3
1.2 2.2 3.0 4.1 4.1 2.3 3.4 2.2 1.7 1.4 1.9 1.3 2.0 1.6 1.8 1.4 1.5 2.0 1.0 1.5 2.7 2.6 1.6 2.1 4.0 1.5 2.0 1.2 1.7
Romania Portugal Bulgaria Hungary Cyprus (Republic) Slovakia Greece Poland Slovenia Lithuania Malta Estonia Latvia Finland EU27 Germany – East Spain Czech Republic Belgium Italy Germany – West United Kingdom Austria Luxembourg France Ireland The Netherlands Sweden Denmark
10.6 15.5 13.8 22.9 19.6 31.7 25.3 26.7 34.4 25.2 37.1 27.8 30.9 34.7 38.0 41.9 40.5 42.7 48.6 47.0 52.2 47.8 52.0 59.1 54.8 52.1 58.1 56.5 66.2
20.7 33.6 13.7 29.5 41.1 32.7 35.6 31.8 44.4 38.1 48.4 40.1 43.0 40.7 47.9 38.6 54.2 48.1 52.1 52.9 57.9 58.7 61.2 60.0 63.0 63.2 67.1 67.0 69.8
31.6 31.6 39.5 40.9 34.6 48.5 40.2 55.0 43.6 54.5 39.1 57.1 51.6 55.7 53.7 60.0 55.9 52.4 53.7 61.5 59.3 61.1 65.6 61.8 68.6 69.2 71.0 78.3 77.7
19.8 25.9 26.2 31.5 32.9 34.4 35.3 36.3 39.9 40.1 40.2 40.8 41.3 41.5 46.1 46.4 47.2 47.6 51.0 53.7 56.3 56.7 59.2 59.8 61.0 61.8 64.4 67.7 70.7
2.1 1.9 2.2 1.5 2.0 1.1 1.6 1.6 1.3 2.0 1.1 1.8 1.6 1.3 1.4 1.2 1.3 1.2 1.1 1.3 1.2 1.4 1.3 1.0 1.3 1.5 1.3 1.6 1.2
Note: The figures above represent the percentage of respondents who attended at least one ballet, dance performance, or opera in the year preceding the survey. OR ¼ odds ratio (for explanation, see footnote 1). Source: Eurostat, Eurobarometer 79.2, 2013.
Note: The figures above represent the percentage of respondents who attended the cinema at least once in the year preceding the survey. OR ¼ odds ratio (see footnote 1). Source: Eurostat, Eurobarometer 79.2, 2013.
Leisure and Cultural Consumption: The European Perspective
contrast between western and northern Europe, on the one hand, and southern and eastern Europe, on the other. The most significant exceptions are Estonia and Latvia, which rank much higher on ballet, dance performance, or opera than on cinema. In addition, the differences between urban and rural areas are much smaller for cinema than for ballet, dance, and opera. All in all, cross-national differences in access to cultural amenities are quite similar in the realm of mass culture and in the elite culture domain. Differences between countries appear to be more a matter of global affluence than cultural legitimacy, in Bourdieu’s sense of the notion (Bourdieu, 1984[1979]). Across Europe, access to cultural facilities displays huge inequalities with respect to social class, education, age, and gender. Relative to other groups, professionals display a higher commitment to cultural participation, as shown by the values of the cultural participation index reproduced in Table 5. The countries’ ranking on this index is consistent with previous results, contrasting once again the same subgroups. It is also again noticeable that the relative
Table 5
843
distance between groups, as measured by the ratio of the professionals’ score to the manual workers’ score, is highest in countries with the lowest average scores, such as Portugal and Hungary, and lowest in countries with the highest average scores, such as Sweden, Finland, and Denmark. These three last countries are also known to be more egalitarian in many other respects (income, wealth, health, education). The variations in the magnitude of the betweengroup differences in cultural participation thus suggest that culture is a stronger social marker in unequal societies than in more egalitarian ones (Hjellbrekke and Korsnes, 2014). These variations might also be due to the impact of educational and cultural policies. Finally, it is worth noting that the cultural participation scores of the professionals are much more homogeneous across nations than the scores of other groups, as shown by the relative standard deviations in the bottom row of Table 5. Note that these values are lowest for the professionals, highest for farmers and fisherman, and twice as high for manual workers than for professionals. European elites appear more culturally homogeneous than the rest of the population.
Cultural Participation Index by occupation, 2013
Portugal Greece Romania Cyprus (Republic) Hungary Poland Bulgaria Italy Slovakia Malta Spain Czech Republic EU27 Austria Belgium Germany –West Germany – East Lithuania Slovenia Ireland France Latvia Finland Luxembourg United Kingdom Estonia The Netherlands Denmark Sweden RSD
FARM
SSE
PROF
MID
NMWkrs
MWkrs
Total
Ratio PROF/MWkrs
3.1 1.0 1.7 0.8 2.2 2.0 1.5 1.8 7.5 6.5 4.5 7.6 3.8 4.2 4.8 2.8 10.3 7.0 4.7 9.1 6.4 9.0 3.9 6.4 5.7 7.0 9.1 7.5 7.7 0.54
3.3 3.0 5.0 3.6 6.7 5.9 4.6 5.0 6.3 6.5 6.3 6.2 6.2 8.0 6.2 7.0 3.9 8.5 9.1 10.7 9.2 9.1 8.1 9.3 9.6 10.0 8.3 10.3 9.9 0.32
8.1 8.0 8.5 7.1 11.1 8.6 8.5 9.2 9.1 11.3 10.4 9.3 11.0 10.5 11.6 10.8 11.1 10.9 11.9 11.1 13.5 10.7 9.4 12.1 11.5 12.0 12.5 13.6 13.7 0.17
7.2 6.3 4.2 5.6 7.0 8.8 6.8 8.3 8.7 9.0 11.1 10.5 10.3 9.6 9.9 8.8 9.9 9.6 9.8 10.6 10.7 10.8 11.1 10.6 10.8 12.3 11.4 13.6 14.3 0.23
4.8 5.0 5.1 4.6 5.9 5.9 6.0 6.2 6.9 7.6 8.2 7.4 8.1 7.5 8.5 7.8 7.9 8.4 8.3 7.7 8.2 8.8 9.7 9.2 10.0 9.9 10.9 11.2 12.4 0.25
2.3 2.5 2.9 3.0 3.0 3.3 3.1 3.7 4.0 4.6 5.4 4.8 4.7 5.0 4.2 4.7 4.8 5.4 5.5 5.9 5.4 6.1 7.0 5.9 6.7 6.8 7.0 8.3 9.6 0.35
3.7 4.1 4.3 4.5 4.8 5.2 5.3 5.6 6.5 6.5 6.8 7.4 7.5 7.5 7.5 7.9 8.0 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.7 8.7 8.8 9.1 9.2 9.4 10.7 11.1 12.8 0.30
3.6 3.3 2.9 2.4 3.7 2.6 2.7 2.5 2.3 2.5 1.9 2.0 2.3 2.1 2.8 2.3 2.3 2.0 2.2 1.9 2.5 1.8 1.3 2.0 1.7 1.8 1.8 1.6 1.4
Note: The relative standard deviation coefficient (RSD) corresponds to the standard deviation divided by the mean of the values of the cultural index across the 27 nations. FARM: Farmers and fishermen. SSE: Small self-employed. PROF: Professionals, business proprietors, owners, employed professionals, top managers. MID: Middle managers, supervisors. NMWkrs: Nonmanual routine workers. MWkrs: Manual routine workers. Source: Eurostat, Eurobarometer 79.2, 2013.
844
Leisure and Cultural Consumption: The European Perspective
Summary and Conclusions Regarding leisure and cultural consumption in Europe, three main tendencies deserve to be underlined. First, time budget surveys suggest a possible halt on the road toward the so-called leisure society. Second, and as shown repeatedly in this article, variations in leisure and cultural consumption vary significantly from one country to another. Third, leisure time remains subjected to significant inequalities, especially in terms of class, education, and gender. The pattern of inequalities is, however, complex. On average, the most advantaged in leisure time are the most disadvantaged in economic, educational, and cultural resources. As demonstrated by Marie Jahoda, Paul F. Lazarsfeld, and Hans Zeisel about the Marienthal unemployed (Jahoda et al., 1971[1932]) – and dramatically illustrated today in some European countries grappling with massive unemployment – overabundant free time is not necessarily synonymous with true leisure. Leisure time cannot be an end in itself if people cannot afford to enjoy it.
See also: Cultural Participation, Trends in; Cultural Policy Regimes in Western Europe; Formal Methods of Cultural Analysis; Globalization and World Culture; Leisure and Cultural Consumption: US Perspective; Social Inequality in Cultural Consumption Patterns.
Bibliography Bourdieu, P., 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA (Original work published 1979). Burda, M., Hamermesh, D.S., Weil, P., 2007. Total Work, Gender and Social Norms. National Bureau of Economic Research. Chenu, A., Herpin, N., 2002. Une pause dans la marche vers la civilisation des loisirs? [A break in the march towards the leisure civilization?]. Économie et statistique 352 (1), 15–37.
Coulangeon, P., Lemel, Y., 2009. The homology thesis: distinction revisited. In: Robson, K., Sanders, C. (Eds.), Quantifying Theory: Pierre Bourdieu. Springer, pp. 47–60. Coulangeon, P., Menger, P.-M., Roharik, I., 2002. Les loisirs des actifs: un reflet de la stratification sociale [Workers’ leisure time: a reflection of social stratification]. Économie et statistique 352 (1), 39–55. Degenne, A., Lebeaux, M.-O., Marry, C., 2002. Les usages du temps: cumuls d’activités et rythmes de vie [How time is put to use: accumulating activities and lifestyles]. Économie et statistique 352 (1), 81–99. Dumazedier, J., 1962. Vers une civilisation du loisir? [Towards a Society of Leisure?]. Le Seuil, Paris. Esping-Andersen, G., 1990. The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Polity Press, Cambridg UK. Gershuny, J., 2000. Changing Times: Work and Leisure in Postindustrial Society. Oxford University Press. Gershuny, J., 2009. Veblen in reverse: evidence from the multinational time-use archive. Social Indicators Research 93 (1), 37–45. Gimenez-Nadal, J.I., Sevilla, A., 2012. Trends in time allocation: a cross-country analysis. European Economic Review 56 (6), 1338–1359. Gronau, R., Hamermesh, D.S., 2008. The demand for variety: a household production perspective. The Review of Economics and Statistics 90 (3), 562–572. Hjellbrekke, J., Korsnes, O., 2014. Cultural distinctions in an egalitarian society. In: Coulangeon, P., Duval, J. (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Bourdieu’s ‘Distinction’. Routledge, Oxford. Jahoda, M., Lazarsfeld, P., Zeisel, H., 1971[1932]. Marienthal: The Sociography of an Unemployed Community. Aldine, Chicago. Lahire, B., 2004. La culture des individus: dissonances culturelles et distinction de soi [The Culture of individuals. Cultural dissonance and self distinction]. La découverte, Paris. Linder, S.B., 1970. The Harried Leisure Class. Columbia University Press, New York. Stiglitz, J.E., Sen, A., Fitoussi, J.-P., 2010. Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress. Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, Paris. Veblen, T., 1899. The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions. Macmillan, New York. Zuzanek, J., Beckers, T., Peters, P., 1998. The ‘harried leisure class’ revisited: Dutch and Canadian trends in the use of time from the 1970s to the 1990s. Leisure Studies 17 (1), 1–19.