Leisure and Cultural Complexity

Abstract

In the early 1980s, the first author (Chick) was the University of Illinois representative to the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF), Inc. At an HRAF meeting in New Haven, Mel Ember recommended the examination of leisure, or aspects of leisure, against a backdrop of cultural complexity because “it correlates with everything.” For its part, leisure has been understudied in time allocation research, since, by definition, it is not devoted to productive ends. In this article, we examine the relationship between leisure and cultural complexity, first, with data from the HRAF and, second, in 12 societies in the Cross-Cultural Studies in Time Allocation series. Specifically, we test Chick’s (1986) hypothesis that simple and complex societies have more free time than those in between. In addition, we examine hypotheses related to cultural complexity and the economic value of children.