{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","uuid":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","normalized_title":"timeforthingslaborleisureandtheriseofmassconsumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","isbns":["9780674250529","9780674250536","9780674979512"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":355,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Time%20for%20Things%20Labor%2C%20Leisure%2C%20and%20the%20Rise%20of%20Mass%20Consumption","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/search"},"page":{"printed_page":61,"pdf_page":69,"physical_index":69,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"d358668b6f622746b86623a60a8170a477daa2a6c91148c42d5d0df556ea65c5"},"chapter":"FOR","content":"There are, however, limits to this explanation, especially with respect to the long-term and large-scale trends delineated in this chapter. The domesticdiscontent argument is that people choose to spend more time at work because family life has become comparatively dissatisfying. And yet (as Hochschild notes) the discontents of family life may well have much to do with the way in which the family has been afected by changes in the organization and experience of working life. The sphere of production and the domestic sphere are deeply interconnected—although, under modern capitalism, the flow of influence tends to run from the former to the latter. Reducing work time would open up possibilities for social life outside both work and home, which quite probably would have very positive efects on the quality of domestic life. Furthermore, a domestic-discontent explanation focuses on workplace and household dynamics that lead individuals to make particular decisions to commit to work time. Yet decisions about how much to work within a given work-time regime have a logic diferent from collective decisions about whether to move from a given work-time regime to a diferent one. Humans, to state the obvious, are profoundly social animals, and the value of free time, therefore, depends to a significant extent on the availability of other people to spend it with. If work time were to be reduced in a concerted fashion for the entire population, then the social character of nonwork time would change, since with everyone working fewer hours, greater social resources and opportunities would become available in nonwork time. The kinds of activity in nonwork time that would become available following a collective shift to less work are qualitatively diferent from those aforded to an isolated individual working fewer hours. To return to the music example, an isolated individual choosing to work less can spend more time playing a musical instrument. But if that person is a member of a community that collectively works less, then, in addition to the option of practicing alone, she can join with others to play music together. Moreover, the situation Hochschild describes is essentially a dichotomous one—individuals either spend more time at work or more time at home. Yet where the entire community has more free time, opportunities are expanded for spending time in social contexts that are neither work nor home. If a community opted for fewer work hours, it would thus become more possible for its members to create the kind of rich associational life imagined by communitarians. Indeed, Benjamin Hunnicutt’s (1996) history of Kellogg’s experiment with six-hour days shows how, after the adoption of the shorter working week, a qualitative shift took place in how people made use of their free time, with much more time given over to community activities. So while a domestic-discontent account seems to provide a plausible explanation for why, under current social conditions, at least some individuals choose to spend more time at work, it is not a good explanation for the absence, in the postwar period, of a collective politics aimed at reducing hours—one similar to the shorter hours movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.30 The explanation is anchored to a particular configuration of work time and free time—a configuration the historical development of which this book takes as a problem in need of explanation.\n\nEmpirical Pattern in the United States\n\n61","previous_page":60,"next_page":62}