Postmodernism and identity: leisure, tourism and consumption

Sociology: Culture & Identity

1. Postmodernism and identity

   • Study: Lyotard (1984) agrues these all-embracing explanations or 'big theories' like class, gender or ethncity for identity - what he calls metanarratives - no longer explain the identities people adopt and the differences between them, and people no longer relate to these metanarratives in forming their identities.
   • Study: Rojek (1995) and Roberts (1978, 1986) believe that what we choose to do in our leisure time, the products we consume and the lifestyle we follow are far more sinificant in forming out identities today. They suggest that most people now adopt any identity or image they wish.
   • Study: Bocok (2004) believes that people's consumer choices - their tastes and the type, image and style of the goods they buy - are important aspects in defining their identities and the image and status they wish to project to others. Through their leisure and consumption choices, people are shopping for lifestyles, and in effect buying and creating identities they follow.
   • Their identities are established through their consumption of the huge diversity of consumer leisure goods and services now on offer, such as music, household decor, holiday destinations or clubs, they type of shop you buy from, the 'labels' they purchase, the type of food and drinks they buy to display in their homes, and the leisure activities tey follow.

2. Leisure in postmodernity

   • Tourism in postmodern society
     • The 'tourist gaze'
       • Key term: The tourist gaze refers to the viewing and experiencing of objects and locations with curiosity and interest, organized by professionals experts to provide pleasurable experiences for tourists that are different from everyday life.
       • Study: Urry (2002) talks of the tourist gaze, whereby tourists gaze upon or view and consume different objects,scenes, experiences, landscapes or townscapes. These are organised paid tourism experts to provide pleasurable experiences and spectales which are out of the orfinary, different from everyday life, and designed to be looked at or gazed upon with interest and curiosity.
         • The tourist gaze illustrates many aspects of leisure in postmodern societies.
       • Study: Baudrillard (2001) refers to such reconstructions as 'simulations', where imaginary things are presented as real.
     • Study: Urry (1995) suggests, much tourism is now sold on the basis of identity packaging. For example, the countryside is now sold to tourists as enabling them to consume the same loactions as literary figures, as in shakepeare or Brontë country, as well as to buy a whole range of symbols linked to them, like te vast range of shakespeare paraphernalia on sale in 'shakespeare country'.
     • Tourism is now not simply about having a break away from home and work, but offers a variety of opportunities to consume cultural experiences and objects to enhance and explore lifestyles and identities.
   • The creation of identity in a media-saturated society
     • Shopping for identities - who do you want to be today?
       • Study: Bauman and May (2004) suggests that advertising for consumer products like perfumes, alcoholic drinks, cars and clothing is not simply about selling the products, as these goods have symbloic significance - the label, the make of trainer, is more of trainer, is more important than the product, the trainer, itself. These products come packaged with an associated lifestyle, as shown in the dress, language, pastimes, home decor and physical apperanceof people are encouraged to buy into, and from which they can choose to shape their personal identities, and established their individuality and difference from other. Advertsing and shopping provide what Bauman and May call 'do-it-youself identity kits'.
       • Study: Bauman (1996) argues that life has become a shopping mall, to stroll around consuming whatever you want, trying out and constructing whatever identities you choose, and changing them whenever you want.
       • Study: Taylor (1999) - society is transformed into 'something resembling an endless shopping mall where people now have much greater choice about how they look, what they consume, and what they believe in'.
     • Study: Strinati (1995) emphasizes the importance and power of the mass media and popular culture in shaping consumer choices.
     • Study: Bradley (1995) argues that new identities are created by globalisation, bringing different cultural groups into contract. People now adopt different identities to meet the diversity in their lives - they no longer identify with class alone, but with ethnicity, gender, disability, race, religion, nationality, music, fashion designer labels, dress, sport and other leisure activities - they can pick 'n' mix to create whatever identities they wish.
     • Study: Miller et al. (1998) points out, shopping has become a major leisure activity in its own right, particularly for women.
     • Study: Featherstone (2007) suggests shopping is not just about buying products, but about buying into lifestyles, giving meaning to people's lives and establishing identities.
   • How much free choice is there in choosing identities and lifesyle
     • Criticisms of Parker
       • Parker's emphais on the way the experience of work influences leisure patterns has been heavily criticised, particularly for putting too much inportance on work experience, and not paying enough attention to facotrs other than work that might shape leisure patterns.
         • Parker over-emphasises the importance of work in shaping leisure activities.
         • Parker over-simplifies the influence of work on leisure, even for those in full-time paid employment.
           • Study: Roberts (1978,1986) and Clarke and Critcher (1995) say he doesn't take into account the choices that people can make in leisure activities, and such activities vary among those even in the same occupation.
         • Parker's research is focused primarily on mean in full-time paid employment.
           • Study: McIntosh (1988) and Deem (1990) (feminist) say that Parker does not take into account the way gender influences leisure, particularly as many women work only part-time and their leisure is far more influenced by the demands of domestic labour and control by men, tan by paid employment.
     • Social class
       • Study: Scarton and Bramham (1995) argues that the postmodernist view that people have a free choice of leisure and create their own identities through participating in leisure-based consumer activities, like shopping, ignores the fact that sich activities are only available to the most well-off members of society.
       • Study: Bauman and May point out that choice takes place withina societyin which resources are unequally distributed. This means for some the opportunity to choose is more real than for others, and most people simply dont have enough money to make free choices. People's choices will also be influecned by the amount of cultural capital they possess. Their taste influence what they choose to buy and the identity they project to others, regardless of how much money they have.
     • Age
       • Age influence the choice of leisure activities, and identities established through them. The leisure of young single people tends to be spent outside the home in the company of their peer group. They may gain some economic independence from either a wage packet or benefits obtained on training schemes, but lacks the financial commitments and responsibilities of household bills, children and the burden of paying rent or a mortage. This means that young people are more leisure -centred than perhaps any other age group expect the retired. They are therefore more likely to have the opportunity of forming their identities through participation in leisure-based consumer lifestyles, expressed through the purchse of clothes and music, and the clubs, pubs and concerts theygo to.
     • The family life cycle
       • The family life cycle will also influence leisure activites and opportunities. Young couples who set up households together and have children will face more restrictions on their leisure activites, with household costs, mortgages and the costs of children. As children become less dependent on their parents, and as mortgages get paid off, people will have more disposable income to spend on leisure activities and consumer goods. Ill-health as people get older, with reduced income in retirement, may once again limit leisure opportuniites.
     • Gender
       • As a result of gender role socialisation, men and women show different leisure interests, and some leisure activities are more associated with one sex than the other. Shopping is a good example of this.
       • Feminist researchers have shown that women generally have less time and opportunity for leisure activities than men, as they often have responsibility for housework and childcare, and sometimes for dependent elderly relatives or the sick and disabled, on top of paid employment. Women also earn less then men, which futher restricts their opportunity to participate in commercial leisure activities.
       • Study: Deem (1986) found that women's leisure activities were often combined with aspects of childcare. This does raise questions of how far such activities are really freely chosen and enjoyable leisure activities, rather than aspects of unpaid domestic labour.
       • Study: Green, Herbron and Woodward's (1990) found that patriarchy and patriarchal control (dominance and control by men) restricted women's leisure opportunities to 'approved' activities. Male partners often felt threatened by women's indepdendent participations in leisure activities that might bring them into social contact with other men.
       • Patriarchy restricts women's independence and choice in leisure activities, through the harassment that women may face in public places. It seems then that gender still remains a very important aspect in leisure choices and identity formation.
     • Ethnicity
       • Study: Roberts (1983) found many Asian workers will put in long working hours so they can afford, and have time, to visit kinfolk in their countries of origin.
         • Asian women are more likely to be restricted to home - and family - based activities because of culturally defined roles.
       • People will often make cultural choices of leisure activity in accordance with the ethnic group to which they belong, such as their tastes in food, music and films. Some minority ethnic groups may find their activities restricted by rasicm.
       • Younger British-born people from minority ethnic groups may be adopting less culturally defined leisure choices and lifestyles, and forming identities that are less constrained by the cultural inheritance of their parents' culture.
     • The pursuit of profit
       • Study: Clarke and Critcher (1995) (Marxist) point out theat leisure has become a highly organised and commercialised multinational industry, employing millions of people worldwide, and concerned with making profits.
     • The postmodernist view that we now have unrestrained choice in our leisure activities, and that we are completely free to adopt any lifestyle and identity we like through our leisure choices and consumer spending, ignores a range of factors which still have important influences, or constraints, on the consumption patterns, leisure activities and lifestyles we can choose, and the identities we can adopt and project onto others.
     • Occupation and work experience
       • Study: Parker (1971, 1976) believes that people's occupations and the way they experience their work, such as the amount of independence and satisfaction they have there, have important influences on their leisure. He suggests that there are three patterns in the link between work and leisure, which he calls the oppostition, neutrality and extension patterns.
       • Work remains an important element in occupying, directing and structuring the individual's time - the demands of working life involve a high degree of discipline if paid jobs are to be kept. It is, for most people, the single biggest commitment of time in any week, and it is perhaps one of the most important experiences affecting people's entire lives. How money is earned, how much, in what working conditions, the length of working hours and the amount of pension all decide in many ways a person's status and the kind of life they will lead. Work has major effects on the time and money people have to enjoy and spend on the leisureand consumer goods which are an increasingly important source of identity.
       • Opposition - physically hard and dangerous male- dominated occupations - opposition to work. Leisure is a central life interest - a sharp contrast in opposition to work, and an opportunity to escape from the hardships of work.
       • Neutrality - Boring and routine work, with little job satisfaction, leading to apathy and indifference to work - Nothing much to do with work (neutral); leisure for relaxation with home and family, like DIY and going out with the family.
       • Extension - Work involving high levels of personal commitment, involvement and job satisfaction - because work is so interesting and demanding leisure is work-related, and there is a blurring of the distinction between work and leisure. Work extends into leisure time, which may be used to improve work performance.
   • Conclusion on leisure, consumption and identity
     • Study: Jenkins (1996) believes that identity remians rooted in social experience and membership of social groups, and is not something that can be changed at will.
     • Study: Bradley (1995) argues that social inequalities remain important, though these no longer shape identities as strongly as they once did. She accepts there is more fluidity and choice now, and that people are less likely to have a single identity, like social class, gender or ethnicity, that overarches all others. She suggests that, while there is some choice over identity, and people have become more aware of the multiple sources of identity open to them, there are still constraints on this choice.
     • Postmodernist idea that people can now pick 'n' mix any identities they wish, through free choices of leisure activities and consumer goods, is somewhat exaggerated.
   • In contemporary British society, much leisure has become more privatised and home-centred. Entertainment that was once available primarily outside the home, through technology like television, computers and music systems.
     • Postmodernists point to the way the leisure industries have now been transformed to provide a vast range of lifestyle activities that people can buy into promote their identities. A example of this is tourism in contemporary societies, through which individuals seek out means of expressing and developing their taste and identities.