Work, leisure and technology

notes on brazilian academic production about the leisure (1989-1999)

Abstract

The aim of this study was to expand the analysis of approaches to work, leisure and technology within the scope of academic production on leisure, from 1989 to 1999. This is a state-of-the-art study whose fundamental research principle is materialist dialectics, expressed in the dynamic, social and historical nature of human action. The research sources are debate forums, journals and institutional repositories, including articles, abstracts, reviews and papers in annals and collections of scientific events, whose texts refer to leisure and also address work and technology. The search in these sources resulted in the selection of 33 texts by 21 authors, whose studies pointed to approaches to leisure (i) in the perspective of the ludic and of the experience of culture, (ii) as a consumer product and (iii) in the perspective of non-working time. Work is discussed in a more generalized way and it is not clear how the category itself is dealt with, seeking to characterize it within the current capitalist social formation. It is approached either from Marxian perspectives, especially in The Machinery and Modern Industry, in passing, as a key sociological category or as the “new culture” of work and its impacts with technological advances and the demands of multifunctional worker. It points to a certain fragmented work, alienated from the worker, but not really delimited as a category discussed within production in which leisure is in opposition to work.