Histories of Leisure

by Koshar, Rudy

• ISBN13: 9781859735206
• ISBN10: 1859735207
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-04-01
• Publisher: Berg Pub Ltd

Summary

In the wake of the American and French revolutions, European culture saw the evolution of a new leisure regime never previously enjoyed. Now we speak of modern leisure societies, but the history of leisure, its experiences and expectations, its scope and variability, still remains largely a matter of conjecture. One message that has emerged from a multiplicity of disciplines is that research on leisure and consumption opens up a hitherto untapped mine of information on the broader issues of politics, society, culture and economics. How have leisure regimes in Europe evolved since the eighteenth century? Why has leisure culture crystallized around particular practices, sites and objects? Above all, what sorts of connections and meanings have been inscribed in leisure practices, and how might these be compared across time and space? This book is the first to provide an historical overview of modern leisure in a wide range of manifestations: travel, entertainment, sports, fashion, 'taste' and much more. It will be essential reading for anyone wishing to know more about European history and culture or simply how people spent their free time before the age of television and the internet.

Author Biography

Rudy Koshar is DAAD Professor of German and European Studies, at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments	vii
List of Contributors	ix
Seeing, Traveling, and Consuming: An Introduction	1	(26)
Rudy Koshar
Part I: Seeing
Museums: Leisure between State and Distinction	27	(18)
Nick Prior
The Circus and Nature in Late Georgian England	45	(16)
Marius Kwint
Flaneurs in Paris and Berlin	61	(18)
Esther Leslie
Crowd Control: Boxing Spectatorship and Social Order in Weimar Germany	79	(26)
Erik Jensen
Part II: Traveling
Travels with Baedeker: The Guidebook and the Middle Classes in Victorian and Edwardian England	105	(26)
Jan Palmowski
Bicycling, Class, and the Politics of Leisure in Belle Epoque France	131	(16)
Christopher S. Thompson
``Every German visitor has a volkisch obligation he must fulfill'': Nationalist Tourism in the Austrian Empire, 1880-1918	147	(22)
Pieter Judson
La Vieille France as Object of Bourgeois Desire: The Touring Club de France and the French Regions, 1890-1918	169	(22)
Patrick Young
The Michelin Red Guides: Social Differentiation in Early-Twentieth-Century French Tourism	191	(24)
Stephen L. Harp
Germans at the Wheel: Cars and Leisure Travel in Interwar Germany	215	(18)
Rudy Koshar
Part III: Consuming
Confessional Drinking: Catholic Workingmen's Clubs and Alcohol Consumption in Wilhehnine Germany	233	(20)
Robert Goodrich
``As I walked along the Bois de Boulogne'': Subversive Performances and Masculine Pleasures in Fin-de-Siecle London	253	(46)
Christopher Breward
``Jewish Taste?'' Jews and the Aesthetics of Everyday Life in Paris and Berlin, 1920-1942	299	(20)
Leora Auslander
Leisure, Politics, and the Consumption of Tobacco in Britain since the Nineteenth Century	319	(18)
Matthew Hilton
Hollywood Glamour and Mass Consumption in Postwar Italy	337	(24)
Stephen Gundle
Index	361