The Politics Of Private Time: Changing Leisure Patterns In Urban China
With the decay of the People’s Commune beginning in the early 1980s, new economic reforms led by Deng Xiaoping changed the way the people of China spent their private time. Until the fall of the Cultural Revolution prior to the 1980s under socialist leader Mao Zedong, leisure was heavily regulated in terms of amount of time spent, forms of leisure and content of the activities. Mao’s regulated leisure activities promoted his socialist ideal of collectivism and productive use of time, which eventually led to state intervention in daily life. Changes in attitude and leisure patterns led to a new social contract developed by the new state under Deng, which were influenced by 7 characteristics of leisure. This included depoliticizing control over private time, privatization into the domestic sphere, diversification of activities available, western and international influence, commercialization of cultural commodities, polarization of income and its effect on leisure patterns and the formation of voluntary associations. As the state loosened its grip on how people spent their free time, new forms of leisure and the expansion of the private sector have developed along with individual autonomy and a consumer culture in contemporary China.
Gathered from this reading, reform in post Mao China has led to many social as well as political issues. Some of the social issues I would like to discuss pertain to the rise of new social classes (social inequalities), the retreat into the domestic sphere and new leisure activities. Some political issues that were briefly mentioned in the reading were consequences of power distribution and the role of international, especially western influences. The focus on Chinese politics on leisure was interesting to me as I realized how China was starting to adopt Western models of urbanization along with the increase of mass commodity consumption. This phenomenon is interesting because it has both advantages for the people and at the same time...
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