When I think about the dramatic changes in society that have occurred since the end of the Industrial Revolution, one of the trends that stands out (to me) is the massive increase in leisure time. In the 19th Century, most people worked far more hours than they do today. The recent decades of that trend were well-described in Daniel Hamermesh's book Spending Time (which I reviewed here). What was left unexplored in that book was the way that leisure pursuits have affected the economy and society.
That is the purpose of Steven Johnson's book Wonderland, which is subtitled "How play made the modern world". Johnson describes the book as:
...a history of play, a history of the pastimes that human beings have concocted to amuse themselves as an escape from the daily grind of subsistence. This is a history of what we do for fun.
The book is comprised of chapters devoted to fashion and shopping, music, food, entertainment, games, and our use of public space. Each chapter is well written and well resourced, and a pleasure to read. Johnson is a great storyteller and the stories he presents are interesting and engaging.
However, from the first chapter, I struggled with the overall thesis of the book, which is that changes in leisure pursuits drove broader societal changes and economic changes. This is most glaringly demonstrated in the first chapter, where Johnson contends that it was the desire for fashion that drove the Industrial Revolution:
When historians have gone back to wrestle with the question of why the industrial revolution happened, when they have tried to define the forces that made it possible, their eyes have been drawn to more familiar culprits on the supply side: technological innovations that increased industrial productivity, the expansion of credit networks and financing structures; insurance markets that took significant risk out of global shipping channels. But the frivolities of shopping have long been considered a secondary effect of the industrial revolution itself, and effect, not a cause... But the Calico Madams suggest that the standard theory is, at the very least, more complicated than that: the "agreeable amusements" of shopping most likely came first, and set the thunderous chain of industrialization into motion with their seemingly trivial pursuits.
In spite of the excellent prose, I'm not persuaded by the demand-side argument for the Industrial Revolution, which flies in the face of lots of scholarship in economic history (as well as in history). Now, it may be that the first chapter just made me grumpy. But Johnson draws several conclusions which are, at best, a selective interpretation of the evidence. And at times, he makes comparisons that are somewhat odd, such as a comparison between the tools and technologies available to artists and scientists and those available to musicians in the 17th Century, concluding that there were fewer and less advanced tools available to artists and scientists than for musicians. There doesn't seem to be any firm basis to make such a comparison (how does one measure how advanced technologies in different disciplines are, in order to compare them?).
The final chapter, though, was a highlight to me. There was a really good discussion of the role of taverns in the American Revolution. And in that discussion, Johnson acknowledges that it is difficult to establish a causal relationship (which made me again wonder why he was unconcerned about the challenges of causality between shopping and the industrial revolution earlier in the book). I really appreciated the discussion of the work of Jürgen Habermas, Ray Oldenburg, and the "third places" (places of gathering that are neither work, nor home). It reminded me of my wife's excellent PhD thesis on cafés.
Overall, I did enjoy the book in spite of my griping about the overall thesis and the way that Johnson sometimes draws conclusions from slim evidence. If you are interested in the history of leisure pursuits, I recommend it to you.
No comments:
Post a Comment