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Recreation

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North American Social Report

Part of the book series: Social Indicators Research Programmes ((SSIR,volume 3))

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Abstract

I thought this chapter was going to be a walk in the park. But I was wrong. Instead of casual reports of fun and games, I discovered serious analyses of a variety of forms of recreation examined from a variety of philosophical, sociological, political and economic points of view. It was impossible to do justice to all of the relevant considerations in every case without writing another book. Nevertheless, I hope no crucial issues have been entirely neglected.

“Sky Masterson. When I was a young man about to go out into the world, my father says to me a very valuable thing. He says to me like this: ‘One of these days in your travels, a guy is going to come up to you and show you a nice brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken, and this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the jack of spades jump out of the deck and squirt cider in your ear. But, son, do not bet this man, for as sure as you stand there, you are going to wind up with an earful of cider.’ ”

From D. Runyon, Guys and Dolls

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Notes

  1. J. R. Wright, ‘Guidelines to Recreation Resource Goals’, Recreation Canada, Department of National Health and Welfare, Leisure in Canada: The Proceedings of the Second Montmorency Conference on Leisure, Montmorency, Quebec — September 7–10, 1971 (Ottawa, Ontario, 1973), p. 49.

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  2. R. Meyersohn, ‘The Charismatic and the Playful in Outdoor Recreation’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (1970), 389, p. 39.

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  3. J. C. Charlesworth, ‘A Comprehensive Plan for the Wise Use of Leisure’, Leisure in America: Blessing or Curse (ed. by J. C. Charlesworth), (Philadelphia: American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1964), p. 38.

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  4. R. Meyersohn, ‘Leisure’, The Human Meaning of Social Change (ed. by A. Campbell and P. E. Converse), (New York: Russell Sage Foundations, 1972), p. 211. For similar views see Meyersohn’s work cited in note 2 and B. G. Milton, Social Status and Leisure Time Activities (Montreal: Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association, 1975), pp. 4-5.

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  5. Ibid., p. 9.

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  6. The only AIPO and CIPO question I found that addressed the issue of personal satisfaction was an item that read: “On the whole would you say that you are satisfied or dissatisfied with the amount of leisure and free time you get to yourself?” In 1963 74% of sampled Canadians said they were satisfied and in 1964 76% of sampled Americans gave that response. (CIPO #305 November 1963; March 14, 1964).

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  7. E. J. Tyler, ‘Leisure Goals and Objectives for the 70’s’, Recreation Canada, Department of National Health and Welfare, Leisure in Canada: The Proceedings of the Second Montmorency Conference on Leisure, Montmorency, Quebec — September 7–10, 1971 (Ottawa, Ontario, 1973), pp. 92-99.

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  8. Ibid., p. 91.

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  9. Milton, op. cit., pp. 12, 20-23.

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  10. Ibid., pp. 99-100.

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  11. This quotation from Marshall McLuhan appeared undocumented in the Report of the Task Force on Sports for Canadians (Ottawa: Department of National Health and Welfare, 1969), p. 7.

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  12. J. Schrank, Snap, Crackle, and Popular Taste (New York: Dell Pub. Co., 1977), p. 185.

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  13. C. Frankel, ‘The Nature and Sources of Irrationalism’, Science (1973), pp. 927-931.

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  14. N. Chomsky, ‘Toward a Humanistic Conception of Education’, Work, Technology and Education (ed. by W. Feinberg and H. Rosemont, Jr.), (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1975), p. 207.

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  15. H. J. Gans, Popular Culture and High Culture (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1974), pp. 3–4.

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  16. B. Berelson and G. A. Steiner, Human Behavior: An Inventory of Scientific Findings (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1964).

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  17. A good review of some of the issues discussed in this section may be found in G. H. Sage,’ sport and the Social Sciences’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (1979), 445, pp. 1-14.

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  18. Special Senate Committee on Mass Media, Mass Media, Volume 1: The Uncertain Mirror (Ottawa: Information Canada, 1970), p. 95.

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  19. M. A. Schwartz, Public Opinion and Canadian Identity (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1967), p. 28.

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  20. Special Senate Committee on Mass Media, op. cit., p. 11.

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  21. Royal Commission on Book Publishing, Canadian Publishers and Canadian Publishing (Toronto: Queen’s Printer for Ontario, 1973), p. 27.

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  22. Royal Commission on Violence in the Communications Industry, Report, Volume 1: Approaches, Conclusions and Recommendations (Toronto: Queen’s Printer for Ontario, 1977), p. 29.

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  23. Royal Commission on Violence in the Communications Industry, Report, Volume 1: Approaches, Conclusions and Recommendations (Toronto: Queen’s Printer for Ontario, 1977), p. 55.

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  24. Task Force on Sports for Canadians, op. cit., p. 12.

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  25. B. Kidd, ‘Canada’s “National” Sport’, Critical Issues in Canadian Society (ed. by C. O. Boydell, C. F. Grindstaff, and P. C. Whitehead), (Toronto: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston of Canada, 1971), p. 428.

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  26. Task Force on Sports for Canadians, op. cit., p. 22.

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  27. Kidd, op. cit., p. 427.

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  28. R. Fulford, ‘U.S. Accepts Our Gifted People as Part of “American” Culture’, Toronto Star, March 31, 1973, p. 77.

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  29. According to the Royal Commission on Violence in the Communications Industry, op. cit., p. 475, “Beginning in 1952, Canada adopted television more quickly than any other country in the world. By the end of 1955, it had become, in many respects, the world’s second television country — in terms of numbers of programs and stations, network service, extent of coverage and per-capita ownership of sets. Montreal became the fourth and Toronto the fifth largest world television production centre.” The United States was of course the world’s first television country.

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  30. J. P. Robinson and P. E. Converse, ’social Change Reflected in the Use of Time’, The Human Meaning of Social Change (ed. by A. Campbell and P. E. Converse), (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1972), p. 37.

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  31. U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Equal Educational Opportunity, Toward Equal Educational Opportunity, 92nd Cong., 2nd Sess., 1972, pp. 18-19.

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  32. Royal Commission on Violence in the Communications Industry, op. cit., p. 6.

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  33. Milton, op. cit., p. 35.

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  34. B. D. Singer, ‘American Invasion of the Mass Media in Canada’, Critical Issues in Canadian Society (ed. by C. L. Boydell, C. F. Grindstaff, and P. C. Whitehead), (Toronto: Holt, Rinehart and Winston of Canada, 1971), p. 425.

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  35. N. Frye, ‘The Quality of Life in the Seventies’, Graduate (June 1971), p. 45. See also J. Mander, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (New York: William Morrow and Co., Inc., 1978), pp. 157-215.

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  36. Royal Commission on Violence in the Communications Industry, op. cit., p. 480.

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  37. There is a review of the work of several of these commissions in Royal Commission on Violence in the Communications Industry, op. cit., pp. 460-487.

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  38. Ibid., p. 27.

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  39. Ibid., p. 3.

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  40. Ibid., p. 467.

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  41. M. D. Blumenthal, R. L. Kahn, F. M. Andrews, and K. B. Head, Justifying Violence: Attitudes of American Men (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Institute for Social Research, 1972), p. 247.

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  42. All the quotations are simply as I recalled them.

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  43. Specific cases in which the bias apparently led directly to action are cited in Special Senate Committee on Mass Media, Mass Media, Volume 2: Words, Music, and Dollars (Ottawa: Information Canada, 1970), pp. 148-151; L. Brown, Television (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, Inc., 1971), pp. 182-236; M. Wheeler, Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1976), pp. 216-239; Schrank, op. cit., pp. 35-40.

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  44. Brown, op. cit., p. 13.

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  45. Royal Commission on Violence in the Communications Industry, op. cit., p. 3.

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  46. Special Senate Committee on Mass Media, Mass Media, Volume I, p. 39. See also Mass Media, Volume 2, p. 119.

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  47. Brown, op. cit., pp. 15-16.

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  48. Mander, op. cit., p. 264. Brown, op. cit., p. 173 was even more critical. “Years of contact with station operators,” he wrote, “documenting their crises and deeds in both small and large cities, have taught me that most of the men who control the country’s electronic media bend to two things: money and political power. They will carry programs against their principles if they are profitable, and they will sell out their last vestige of First Amendment freedom to any politician who would give them a sense of permanence as licensees. They are pushovers for a government that would seek absolute rule.”

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  49. For descriptions of how television teaches, see Schrank, op. cit., pp. 29-35; Royal Commission on Violence in the Communications Industry, op. cit., p. 23; Mander, op. cit., pp. 68, 253-257; Gans, op. cit., pp. 57-60.

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  50. J. Orgega y Gasset. Meditations on Hunting (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1972), p. 31.

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  51. R. S. Bond and J. C. Whittaker, ‘Hunter-Fisherman Characteristics: Factors in Wildlife Management and Policy Decisions’, Recreation Symposium Proceedings (ed. by E. vH. Larson), (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1971), pp. 131–132.

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  52. R. S. Bond and J. C. Whittaker, ‘Hunter-Fisherman Characteristics: Factors in Wildlife Management and Policy Decisions’, Recreation Symposium Proceedings (ed. by E. vH. Larson), (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1971), pp. 129–131.

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  53. Ortega y Gasset, op. cit., p. 57 gave the following general definition: “Hunting is what an animal does to take possession, dead or alive, of some other being that belongs to a species basically inferior to its own.”

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  54. Ibid., p. 102.

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  55. G. H. Stankey, R. C. Lucas, and R. R. Ream, ‘Relationships Between Hunting Success and Satisfaction’, Thirty-Eighth North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference Transactions (1973), p. 240.

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  56. B. J. Schole, F. A. Glover, D. D. Sjogren, and E. Decker, ‘Colorado Hunter Behavior, Attitudes, and Philosophies’, Thirty-Eighth North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference Transactions (1973), p. 245.

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  57. Stankey, Lucas and Ream, op. cit., p. 240.

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  58. Schole, Glover, Sjogren, and Decker, op. cit., p. 246.

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  59. See references in Ibid., and Bond and Wittaker, op. cit., pp. 129-130.

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  60. Ortega y Gasset, op. cit., p. 101.

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  61. Ibid., p. 106.

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  62. Ibid., p. 79.

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  63. E. O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1975).

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  64. J. W. Randolf, ‘Modern Hunter Only has to Look Stoic — Fancy Equipment Does the Rest’, The World of “Wood, Field, and Stream” (ed. by R. A. Wolters), (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1956), p. 3.

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  65. L. Benoit, ‘Your Children and Hunting: Start “Em Right”,’ Outdoor Life (July 1979), pp. 68-69, 107.

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  66. On the hunter as an “expert technician” see J. A. Hunter, Hunter (New York: Harper and Brothers, Pub., 1952), p. 225.

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  67. For example, see J. McMurtry, ‘A Case for Killing the Olympics’, Maclean’s (January 1973), pp. 57-60.

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  68. It’s also worthwhile to mention that at one point I defended the sport. See A. C. Michalos, ‘The Unreality and Moral Superiority of Football’, Journal of the Philosophy of Sport (1977), pp. 22-24. At a minimum that proves that old dogs can learn new tricks.

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  69. J. McMurtry,’ smash Thy Neighbor’, The Atlantic (January 1972), p. 78.

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  70. Ibid.

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  71. Ibid., p. 79.

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  72. “Each January, 80 million people watch the Supper Bowl, the contest to determine the champion of the National Football League.” J. H. Frey, ‘Preface’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (1979), 445, p. vii.

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  73. Objections to the arguments presented in this paragraph may be found in J. McMurtry, ‘The Illusions of a Football Fan: A Reply to Michalos’, Journal of the Philosophy of Sport (1977), pp. 11-14. Needless to say, perhaps, I don’t think the objections are sound.

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  74. For a review of the literature on age differences in relation to leisure activity, see Milton, op. cit., pp. 17-19.

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  75. U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Outdoor Recreation, The 1970 Survey of Outdoor Recreation Activities: Preliminary Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972), p. 104.

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  76. C. Kirsh, B. Dixon, and M. Bond, A Leisure Study — Canada 1972 (Toronto: A. C. Design and Culturean Pub., 1973), p. 230.

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  77. W. A. Leuschner and R. B. Herrington, ‘The Skier: His Characteristics and Preferences’, Recreation Symposium Proceedings (ed. by E. vH. Larson), (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1971), p. 135.

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  78. On the question of conflicts among participants in various activities, see W. F. LaPage, ‘Cultural “Fogweed” and Outdoor Recreation Research’, Recreation Symposium Proceedings (ed. by E. vH. Larson), (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1971), pp. 188-190, and R. C. Lucas, ‘Hikers and Other Trail Users’, Recreation Symposium Proceedings (ed. by E. vH. Larson), (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1971), p. 120.

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  79. S. Sinclair, ‘Public and School Libraries’, Background Papers (ed. by Royal Commission on Book Publishing), (Toronto: Queen’s Printer for Ontario, 1972), p. 223.

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  80. Economic Council of Canada, Report on Intellectual and Industrial Property (Ottawa: Information Canada, 1971), p. 169.

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  82. Toronto Star, May 30, 1973, p. 7.

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  83. Ibid.

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  84. Quoted from Mander, op. cit., p. 289.

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  85. L. W. Tombaugh, ‘External Benefits of Natural Environments’, Recreation Symposium Proceedings (ed. by E. vH. Larson), (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1971), pp. 75-76, and J. V. Krutilla and J. L. Knetsch, ‘Outdoor Recreation Economics’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (1970), 389, pp. 65-67.

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  89. Wright, op. cit., pp. 51-52.

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  90. Ibid., p. 53. Compare the discussion of population density here in Volume I, Chapter 2.3.

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  91. P. J. Schmitt, Back to Nature: The Arcadian Myth in Urban America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970).

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  93. Ibid., pp. 129-143.

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  94. The quotation is from L. Eiseley according to R. Nash, ‘Do Rocks Have Rights?’, Small Comforts for Hard Times (ed. by M. Mooney and F. Stuber), (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), p. 128.

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  95. Wright, op. cit., p. 45 and ‘Going to a Park? Your Visit May be Rationed Now’, U.S. News and World Report, May 8, 1972, p. 40.

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  96. Ibid.

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  98. Ibid., p. 131.

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  100. According to a 1970 report prepared by the firm of Ernst and Ernst for the Royal Commission on Book Publishing, “The Canadian book publishing industry’s contribution to the national economy of 0.06% is significantly lower than the United States book publishing industry’s value added which accounted for 0.22% of the United States G.N.P. in 1969. Revenue of United States publishers accounted for 0.26% of total G.N.P.” Royal Commission on Book Publishing, op. cit., p. 3.

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  1. University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada

    Alex C. Michalos

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Michalos, A.C. (1981). Recreation. In: North American Social Report. Social Indicators Research Programmes, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-6916-3_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-6916-3_3

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