Non-Work Obligations by Robert A. Stebbins

Author:Robert A. Stebbins [Stebbins, Robert A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, Social Theory, Business & Economics, Workplace Culture, Labor, General, Sports & Recreation, Cultural & Social Aspects
ISBN: 9781800710160
Google: pDYTEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
Published: 2021-01-11T02:49:09+00:00

Lifestyle

The study of lifestyle has consisted primarily of the examination of activities in which people routinely engage in the domains of work and leisure. The following definition fits well the aims of this book: lifestyle is a distinctive set of shared patterns of tangible behavior that is organized around a set of coherent interests or social conditions or both, that is explained and justified by a set of related values, attitudes, and orientations and that, under certain conditions, becomes the basis for a separate, common social identity for its participants (Sobel, 1981; Stebbins, 1997b, see also Veal, 1993). At bottom, a lifestyle formed around work, leisure, and non-work obligation rests fundamentally on the ways people allocate their minutes, hours, days, weeks, and so on to activities in the three domains. Generally speaking, in leisure, compared with the other two domains, free time has long been considered a key resource for participants to manipulate for their personal ends. This contrasts with work and non-work obligation, which offers comparatively little temporal flexibility.

The degree of disagreeableness, the number of non-work obligations, and their importance number among the elements that make up the lifestyle a person leads when not working or pursuing leisure. Weather patterns can be a factor, as when a winter of an exceptional number of snow storms forces householders to clear their sidewalks with uncommon frequency. Cutting the grass during a lengthy dry spell vis-à-vis during a period of superabundant rain can have implications for the amount of time and the number of occasions they must spend pushing a lawn mower and wrestling with unusually healthy weeds choking out the flowers. Otherwise, disagreeable routine care of a relative or friend, necessitates, say, weekly or semi-weekly visits, becomes another element in a non-work obligation lifestyle. Moreover, as mentioned earlier, grocery shopping is for most people a regular non-work lifestyle activity, and it is likewise (for some people) patronizing a dry cleaning service or a laundromat. People faced with routine medical examinations or treatments must add these to this lifestyle. Examples include the inescapable monitoring and medicinal injections that come with certain types of diabetes and the regular physiotherapeutic exercises designed to regain bodily conditioning after a long illness or lengthy recovery from a major bone fracture. Finally, being forced to wait in long lines is an unpleasant non-work obligation experienced at times in, for instance, the supermarket, post office, bank, and medical services.

The recurrent elements in the lifestyle generated by non-work obligations may give a distinctive structure to a person's existence in that domain. Thus, most people are not insulin-taking diabetics nor are they recovering from a major fracture. These kinds of disagreeable non-work obligations would appear to fall outside the culture of obligation (discussed in the next chapter). This suggests that the unpleasant aspects of such activities are not easily shared due to a general lack of familiarity with them compared with common routines like mowing the lawn and shoveling the sidewalk. By contrast, routine chores (e.g., preparing dinner, walking the

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