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Mass leisure
- a. Preindustrial time: play or leisure activities closely connected to work patterns based on seasonal or daily cycles typical of the life of peasants and artisans
- i. Impacted by industrialization
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Factory
- 1. Factory imposed new work patterns that were determined by the rhythms of machines and clocks and removed work time completely from the family environment of farms and workshops
- a. Work and leisure opposite with leisure viewed as fun not work
- i. Leisure time: evening, weekends, summerà mass leisure
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New technology
- i. New technology and business practices also determined leisure pursuits
- 1. Ferris Wheel and transport allowed attendance at athletic events and parks and dances and beaches
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Music and Dance Halls in 19th
- i. First music hall in London in 1849 for lower class audienceà 1880: 500
- 1. More respectable; enticed both women and children to attend
- ii. New dance halls were for adults due to sexually suggestive dancing
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Tourism
- a. Tourism created by upper and middle class until wages increased and allowed workers to take paid vacations
- i. Thomas Cook: British pioneer of mass tourism; responsible for organizing railroad trip to temperance gatherings; he offered trips regularly due to profits through renting trains, lowering prices, and increasing # of passengers; offered tours
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Team Sports
- a. Team Sports were mass leisure, though sports were not new, but no longer chaotic and spontaneousà organized, with rules and official s
- i. English Football Association, American Bowling Congress
- ii. Not just for fun, but to provide training in both individual skills and sense of teamwork for military service
- 1. Evident in British public schools where organized sports were at the center of the curriculum
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Professionalism
- i. They rapidly became professionalized
- 1. Britain: soccer had Football Association/ rugby: Rugby Football Union
- 2. US: First national association to recognize professional baseball players formed in 1863
- a. 1900: National League and American League had monopoly over professional baseball
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Development of urban transportaiton systems
- 1. Development of urban transportation systems made possible the construction of stadiums where thousands could attend
- a. Professional teams became objects of mass adulation by crowds of urbanites who compensated for their lost sense of identity in mass urban areas by developing these new loyalties
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Spectator sports
- i. Spectator sports even represented mass differences
- 1. Upper class soccer teams in Britain looked down on working-class teams
- ii. Sports cult mostly male oriented
- 1. Belief that females weren’t suited for it, although they could play croquet and lawn tennis
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Authorities
- a. Authorities argued that new amusements were important for improving people, they just provided entertainment and distraction
- i. Shift from festivals and fairs (active and spontaneous participation)à mass leisure (businesses for passive mass audiences and for profits)
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