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Reviews / Comptes Rendus
| Jeffrey Hill, Sport, Leisure and Culture in Twentieth-Century Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave 2002)
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| PROFESSOR HILL, who has written extensively on the British Labour movement in the 19th and 20th century and a history of Nelson, Lancashire, has expanded his boundaries into the neglected areas of sport and leisure. Even in England where there is a substantial body of research by historians on sport and leisure, no one has brought the two areas together. Hill attempts to bring sport and leisure out of "the margins of academic discourse" and show its relevancy to the broader field of social history — a most worthwhile endeavour. Professor Hill recognizes that for the most part historians regard as unimportant the leisure activities of all classes — they are incidental to the "more" important things in life. The reality is that for significant numbers of people sport/leisure activities were not marginal but provide a central focus to life. Central to his approach is the assumption that "The book's 'big idea' is that sport and leisure are processes which themselves have a determining influence over people's lives — processes from which we derive MEANING." (2) In other words, leisure is not, as the majority of historians believe, peripheral to life but rather central. Sport and leisure provide different insights into the structure and functioning of society. |
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One of the strengths of the book lies in the clear articulation of the theories that informed the writing; Barthes, Derrida, Bourdieu, Baudrillard, Geertz, and particular elements of Gramsci — his idea of Civil Society and the emphasis upon power and power relations. These inform the work but never override the evidence. Evidence is foundational to this book. Hill also locates leisure within the wider context of social history. Very simply, the scholarship is impeccable. |
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The book is structured around three main themes that, in turn, are informed by three sub-themes. An introduction in which he examines the main themes of "sport," "leisure," "culture," "Britain,"and "twentieth century" lays the foundation of what follows. Part 1, "Commercial Sport and Leisure," examines, in separate chapters, Association Football, Sport and the Media, Going to the Pictures: America and the Cinema, and Getting Away From it All: The Holiday Spirit. Part 2 focuses on Leisure, the Home, and Voluntary Activity. The three chapters consider Leisure, the Home, Radio and Television, Youth, Age and the Problem of Leisure, and the Club Principle. Part 3 examines Public Policy: The Role of the State and Politics in Sport and Leisure; and From "Rational Recreation" to "Sport for All." Three sub-themes provide threads that run through the book: gender, class, and ethnicity. While Professor Hill provides a great deal of evidence of the sport/leisure activities, it is in his insights into the complex nature of class (also gender and ethnicity) and class relations that he enters new territory. He provides subtle and nuanced views of the ways in which class permeated all aspects of sport/leisure: radio announcers having to wear black ties, an in-depth analysis of the composition of cinema audiences, and George Formby being portrayed as the sort of worker their superiors prefer to see. Also there's the history of holiday-making as a history of class relations, with travel brochures aimed at different audiences, magazines for girls portraying similar ideas of femininity, domesticity, and early marriage; the central role of the "pub" in working-class life; and the sheer number of local associations of all kinds, over 4,000 in Birmingham alone in the 1970s. What this all leads to is new insights into the nature of class and class relations. Professor Hill never oversimplifies but leaves the reader with an understanding of the subtlety and complexity of class relations. This supports my own work on the leisure activities of the miners of Northumberland, England, that revealed an amazingly complex set of activities and social relationships that call into question simplistic class analyses. Very simply what Hill has done is to dig deeper into the "realities" of working-class life and class relations. He opens new doors and new avenues to an understanding of the social relationships that were foundational to British society in the twentieth century. |
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How is this book relevant to readers of Labour/Le Travail? It is relevant because Canadian historians even more than their British counterparts marginalize as irrelevant, sport/leisure activities. One has only to look at the last ten years of Labour/Le Travail to recognize that Canadian labour historians rarely address leisure. Very few articles address leisure even in a cursory fashion and only thee of the book reviews deal with sport/leisure — Kidd, Howell, and Marks. In fact, there is one book that attempts an analysis of sport/leisure along the lines advocated by Hill: Donald Wetherell with Irene Kmet, Useful Pleasures: The Shaping of Leisure in Alberta, 1896–1945. What if Hill is right and sport/leisure was and is an important area from which people derive meaning? It means that historians are missing an important element of life and another entry into an understanding of working-class life. A study of leisure would reveal new ways in which the working class resisted the power of the dominant groups to structure what they watched, read, and did. This book should be read by anyone truly interested in understanding the reality of working-class life. |
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There are several interesting little additions that add significantly to the value of the book. First, at the end of each chapter there is a chronology of events that provides a context for the chapter. In fact, it may have been useful to provide these at the beginning to set the stage for the ensuing discussion. Additionally Hill provides a small number of Key Readings, usually four or five, that provide entry into more in-depth discussion of the topics covered in the chapter. Even more interesting are the 182 entries in his bibliography that are divided into chapter topics. Hill provides a one-sentence assessment of the importance of each source. For example, "Cunningham, H. Leisure in the Industrial Revolution c.1780–c.1880. Another classic; helped to define the field of leisure for historians; alert to theory but not a slave to it." (221) These one-sentence commentaries provide an outstanding review of the secondary literature. The bibliography in conjunction with the commentaries provides a clear overview of the development of the areas of study. Interestingly while some areas such as youth, age, and community were based on research in the 1960s, most emerged in the late 1980s and 1990s. In other words, this book could not have been written earlier than the end of the 20th century. |
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In conclusion, in the mind of this reviewer, Jeffrey Hill has provided convincing evidence and arguments as to the validity of his "big idea" that sport and lesiure are processes from which people derive meaning. Unfortunately for Canadian historians, because of their research agendas, the body of primary research and secondary sources remains thin and thus sport and leisure will remain on the margins of Canadian social history. |
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Alan Metcalfe
University of Windsor |
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