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Leisure, the (Lost) Basis of American Progress

Benjamin Hunnicutt

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Guest Introduction

My guest today is the historian and professor of leisure studies at the University of Iowa, Ben Hunnicutt.

His scholarship focuses on a simple, perplexing question: "why, after 100 years of shortening working weeks, did America abandon the pursuit of leisure?"

I feverishly read two of his books - Work Without End, and Free Time: The Forgotten American Dream - that chronicle the history of the relationship between America's political economy and the pursuit of leisure time for all.

He brings the precision of a historian together with the sensibility of a poet (nowhere more visible than his deep study of Walt Whitman) to make sense of a fascinating time period during which America changed its mind.

In our conversation, we cover:

  • The history of the ideas of shorter working weeks and leisure time from 1830 until today.
  • The difference between "economic progress" and "higher progress".
  • How children who spend more time at play grow into adults better suited to handle leisure time
  • The psychologies of labor and leisure
  • Strategies to reintroduce leisure into the U.S. political economy.

Enjoy!

Time Map

  • 5:00 – Would more leisure time mean more, or less, innovation?
  • 8:15 – What is the 'great mystery of leisure'?
  • 15:20 – What is "higher progress"?
  • 25:00 – "Liberation capitalism" and the experience economy
  • 34:00 – Cultural attitudes toward leisure reversed between 1930-1980
  • 38:30 – Work shifts from means to end; Kellogg factory's 6-hour workday
  • 40:30 – Connection between declining leisure and declining play
  • 46:00 – Play as meta-emotion framework for learning emotional management
  • 49:00 – 1980s: scientists attempt grafting leisure autonomy onto work structure
  • 55:20 – Pygmalion effect and systems assumptions influencing outcomes
  • 1:02:00 – Cultural nausea with work ideology but uncertainty about alternatives
  • 1:08:00 – "Ontological multi-dimensionality of existence"
  • 1:10:00 – Wealth dynamics, redistribution, and pre-distribution

Links from the Conversation