Analytic Summary of “Work
and Leisure in Everyday Life”
Lefebvre begins his essay saying
that everyone critiques their own life through the leisure activities they
pursue, which is used to represent what is missing from their work or everyday
life. At the same time there exists a
unity between work and leisure and yet, a contradiction. Lefebvre explains how work for peasants
hundreds of years ago was not separate from their home and private life, but in
fact it was the same thing. But with the widening of social classes and
the appearance of the bourgeois, there was a shift in the meaning of work. These wealthy individuals did not incorporate
work into their home and everyday activities, causing a separation of work from
leisure simply because they could afford to do so.
Reinforcing this separation was a “fragmentation
of labour” during the industrial revolution as Lefebvre called it, which even
further polarized the notions of work and leisure. Factory workers could not take pride in their
work for they only made small parts of whole product, never feeling the
gratification of creating a product in its entirety because of the
mechanization of production. Lefebvre
stated that this created a “general need for leisure”. This leisure was used a “break” or
“distraction” from work offering liberation and relaxation from a hard day of
labor. Lefebvre accounts for one source
of leisure displayed through the nudity and sexy images displayed in everyday life,
used for people to escape the hardships and dissatisfaction in their normal
lives. This creates an illusion in our everyday
life just as sports do, where we escape through entertainment, or a fake world
of happiness that mimics the real one.
The irony of all of this is that we try so hard to break away from work
to attain a sense of belonging and to relax and enjoy time with others, without
worrying about the hardships of work.
Yet we perform activities such as going to the movies where everyone alienates
themself from one another because of a lack of communication. All of these examples help to depict the
contradictory yet similar nature of work and leisure that Lefebvre tries to
show in a concrete and real way.
This analysis of the changing notion of
leisure is important because it helps us to define what needs and desires are
missing from everyday life. In this way,
we can successfully try to make a change to the environment in which people
work. By incorporating all of our needs
in the working environment we may hopefully fall back to this unity of work and
leisure where people can really enjoy what they do in its entirety.
When analyzing my own leisure activity
using Lefebvre’s theory I see that I’m one of the few whose work and leisure
are the same thing. I teach tennis for
work, which is an activity that I have loved to do ever since I was
little. This unity of work and leisure
demonstrates how my needs are fulfilled in my everyday life because I love what
I do. Some of my needs that are fulfilled by this activity include getting
exercise, fresh air, money, and greater confidence in myself. If I can handle any problem on the court, the
same goes for any problem in real life. This boosts my self-esteem and determination
because I feel as if it’s me against the world, and this separation from
everything by a net and some white lines on the ground help me gain a sense of
that. I need no “break” or “distraction”
through some other activity, which leads me to be a more productive and ultimately
happier member of society. I do not need
to fall into an illusory fictional world of happiness because I enjoy my work. Unity between the two notions can also be
attributed to the pride I get from helping my clients get better at something we
both love. When I teach I get to see the
end result of my work and know that I was the only one to help my clients
improve and no one else. That gives me a
huge sense of gratification that internally motivates me to teach even more and
to continue to pursue this combination of work and leisure that elude so many.
Tennis
for others can be seen as a leisure activity in itself geared more towards a
Caucasian upper middle and wealthy class.
This is supported by the game’s history.
The first conceived notion of tennis came from the Monarch Lois X of
France who built the first indoor tennis court in the world. Several other Monarchs throughout history
such as King Charles V of France and even Henry VIII of England also advocated
the game. Tennis became a game that
represented someone of a high status in society. Additionally, tennis used to only be available
to those who were members of country clubs, which even further isolated the
game from commoners.
The equipment such as tennis racquets,
tennis shoes, and tennis bags are fairly expensive not to mention tennis
lessons! Furthermore, those who would
need and desire exercise from their leisure activities would generally be
people who have white-collar jobs who do not perform manual labor. One can assume that they are most likely to
be professionals such as, businessmen or lawyers who have high paying jobs who
probably sit in an office all day long, which demonstrate a particular unmet
need in their workplace. But at the same
time, tennis also represents a certain wealthy and sophisticated status that
these professionals want to embrace and ultimately achieve if they have not
already done so.
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