Hobbies: Leisure and the Culture of Work in America

by Steven Gelber

Overview

Whether it's needlepoint or woodworking, collecting stamps or dolls, everyone has a hobby, or is told they need one. But why do we fill our leisure time with the activities we do? And what do our hobbies say about our culture? Steven Gelber here traces the history and significance of hobbies from the mid-nineteenth century through the 1950s. Although hobbies are often touted as a break from work, Gelber demonstrates that they reflect and reproduce the values and activities of the workplace by bringing utilitarian rationality into the home, imitating the economic stratification of the marketplace, and reinforcing traditional gender roles.

Drawing on a wide array of social and cultural theory, Hobbies fills a critical gap in American cultural history and provides a compelling new perspective on the meaning of leisure.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231113939
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	06/25/1999
Edition description:	Revised ed.
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Stephen Gelber is professor of history and chair of the History Department at Santa Clara University. He is the author of Black Men and Businessmen: The Growing Awareness of a Social Responsibility and Saving the Earth: The History of a Middle-Class Millenarian Movement.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction: Context and Theory
Section 1: Hobbies as a Category
1: Occupations for Free Time
Section 2: Collecting
2: The Collectible Object
3: Collectors
4: Constructing a Collector's Market
5: Deconstructing a Collector's Market
Section 3: Handicrafts
6: Crafts, by Tools, and Gender in the Nineteenth Century
7: Expanding the Boundaries of Crafts
8: Home Crafts in Hard Times
9: Kits: Assembly as Craft
10: Do-It-Yourself: Expected Leisure
Conclusion
Index

What People are Saying About This

Woody Register

Based upon thorough research in the prescriptive literature as well as in the actual practice of hobbies in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America, Gelber's book exposes the uneasy relief enjoyed by the leisure-time hobbyist seeking to escape the clock-bound disciplines and diminishing psychological rewards of work in a corporate capitalist economy.

— Woody Register, University of the South

Robert Stebbins

Explains why hobbies emerged in nineteenth century American as desirable activity, in the face, nonetheless, of the dominant work ethic centered in industrial capitalism. Using detailed analyses of collecting and handicrafts, Gelber illustrates the variable reception of these two hobbies from then to the present. Hobbies is a beautifully written and eminently readable contribution to the study of serious leisure.

— Robert Stebbins, University of Calgary; author of The Barbershop Singer

Editorial Reviews

Gelber has uncovered an astonishing array of writings—advice literature, popular magazines, newspaper articles—on hobiies.... Gelber takes an unusal and little studied topic—the history of hobbies—and shows us its depth, its breadth and its importance. This is a fine book, one that reminds us that the study of leisure is also the study of work, gender, and culture.

Cindy S. Aronn Historical Review

Gelber has uncovered an astonishing array of writings—advice literature, popular magazines, newspaper articles—on hobiies.... Gelber takes an unusal and little studied topic—the history of hobbies—and shows us its depth, its breadth and its importance. This is a fine book, one that reminds us that the study of leisure is also the study of work, gender, and culture.

American Historical Review - Cindy S. Aron

Gelber has uncovered an astonishing array of writings — advice literature, popular magazines, newspaper articles — on hobiies.... Gelber takes an unusal and little studied topic — the history of hobbies — and shows us its depth, its breadth and its importance. This is a fine book, one that reminds us that the study of leisure is also the study of work, gender, and culture.

— Cindy S. Aron

American Historical Review

It is a scholarly and demanding story, well-illustrated and written with a wry humour. . . a major groundbreaker, offering a cultural history of leisure at its best.

Journal of Contemporary History

Explains why hobbies emerged in nineteenth century American as desirable activity, in the face, nonetheless, of the dominant work ethic centered in industrial capitalism. Using detailed analyses of collecting and handicrafts, Gelber illustrates the variable reception of these two hobbies from then to the present. Hobbies is a beautifully written and eminently readable contribution to the study of serious leisure.

Robert Stebbins

Gelber has uncovered an astonishing array of writings -advice literature, popular magazines, newspaper articles -on hobiies. . . . Gelber takes an unusal and little studied topic -the history of hobbies -and shows us its depth, its breadthm and its importance. This is a fine book, one that reminds us that the study of leisure is also the study of work, gender, and culture.

Cindy S. Aron

Based upon thorough research in the prescriptive literature as well as in the actual practice of hobbies in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America, Gelber's book exposes the uneasy relief enjoyed by the leisure-time hobbyist seeking to escape the clock-bound disciplines and diminishing psychological rewards of work in a corporate capitalist economy.

Woody Register

The author (an academic, but his affiliation is not stated) examines the history and social context of two categories of hobbies<-->collecting and crafts. Because collecting has changed little in 150 years, he addresses the subject topically, with discussion of the collectible object, collectors, and the construction and deconstruction of a collector's market. He writes about crafts chronologically, from the Victorian to the postwar eras, examining issues of industrialization, capitalism, gender roles, and leisure in American society. The study stops at the end of the 1950s<-- >before the counterculture arts and crafts movement of the 1960s. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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