The Roots of a Leisure and Entertainment Society

SOCIAL SCIENCES The origins of leisure

Dr Laurent Turcot explores how socioeconomic changes in the past created new cultural contexts for sports and recreational activities – and led to today’s leisure-focused Western society

What drives your interest in the foundations of enable the evaluation of various points of view: contemporary, leisure-based urban culture? analysis of urban spatial forms, land use and toponymy. Iconographic documents (such as How people have exercised and entertained paintings and engravings) also allow us to themselves is intimately related to the great analyse fashions that regulate the popularity of transformations in Western society through the various institutions. ages. Sports and leisure are at the very heart of our history and Western society. What are the benefits of achieving a better understanding of how our society became Why must we look back over centuries to leisure-orientated? understand the origins of our modern leisure- and entertainment-based society? Westernised societies have transformed leisure activities and sports into references The period between the 16th Century and and models which influence all spheres of life. the beginning of the 19th Century provided Not only are these practices at the crossroads conditions which helped sports and leisure of each period’s vast political, economic, activities to emerge, but more importantly, social and cultural trends, but they are also promoted a framework that came to define and historical objects of prime importance and organise their practice. Throughout Europe, allow us to study the veritable essence of the Church and State were abandoning their each important moment in history. How can role as patrons of the arts and culture, allowing we understand the appearance of gymnastics businessmen with money-making leisure and in the 19th Century without considering the sports event companies to fill the gap. This emergence of nation-states? How can we phenomenon cannot be understood without evaluate entertainment in the court of Louis examining the vast urban renovation projects XIV without mentioning royal absolutism? being undertaken in many European cities Can we cite mediaeval tournaments without such as Paris, London, Prague, Venice, Berlin, reference to the ideals of social order and Turin, Bath, Nancy, Bordeaux and Lisbon. A dignity that combatant knights embodied? huge array of structures and spaces were built Again, how can the Olympic Games of to serve the relaxation and pleasure needs of antiquity be analysed without linking them to specific audiences. the culture of the body, and to the medicine and philosophy being developed at the time? What sources do you use to explore the development of leisure and entertainment? Where do you see your research going in the future? Reflection surrounding identity is supported by legal and judicial sources, such as police I am interested in the emergence of a new reports, to understand how offences reveal a commercial figure in the 18th Century: whole host of unwritten rules. namely, the business owner of leisure- based establishments – people such as To determine the influence of the urbanisation Jonathan Tyers (of the Vauxhall Theatre in process on the emergence of new social and London) and Jean-Baptiste Nicolet (who cultural practices linked to leisure activities, owned the Théâtre des Grands Danseurs du we compare consumption patterns in urban Roi in Paris). I am also planning to analyse settings to those of a whole territory, by how leisure society, which was glorified by balancing how municipal representatives and sociologists in the 1960s and 1970s, was so private entrepreneurs view areas of leisure completely abandoned, and how, culturally and entertainment. and economically, the emergence of the all- powerful neoliberal work model came to be Urban historical archives and cartographic the rallying cry for Western society and the documents provide images of buildings and globalised world.

1 INTERNATIONAL INNOVATION THE ROOTS OF A LEISURE AND ENTERTAINMENT SOCIETY

OBJECTIVE The long cultural To explore the development of urban culture in the 16th to the 19th Centuries, with a particular focus on sports and leisure. heritage of idle pursuits PARTNERS Centre interuniversitaire d’études québécoises (CIEQ) Far from being a modern phenomenon, today’s leisure-orientated Centre interuniversitaire de recherche sur la première modernité (CIREM) society rests on foundations laid more than hundreds of years ago FUNDING as Europe underwent major societal transformations, according Social Sciences and Humanities Research to research at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières Council (SSHRC) Canada Research Chairs

Fond de recherche du Québec, Société et culture WITH THE RISE of professional sport and huge demand for entertainment, sports events CONTACT have become big business. According to Dr The ways in which sports Dr Laurent Turcot Laurent Turcot, Canada Research Chair in the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières History of Leisure and Entertainment at the and leisure activities shape Department of Humanities Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, specific 3351 Boulevard des Forges, Trois-Rivières economic levers – spanning television rights, identity and define behaviour Quebec sponsorships, advertising and promotion – have Canada helped to turn sporting spectacles into some of today are founded in the major G9A 5H7 the building blocks of mass culture. socioeconomic transformations T +1 514 759 0161 Fans can now experience a sports event E [email protected] through radio, television or the internet, of Western society that took http://bit.ly/1VDtLng and in sharing their experience with others, th achieve a powerful sense of both individual place after the 16 Century http://bit.ly/1XsAakr and community identity. “The spectator’s role http://bit.ly/1VjoBhA integrates a whole set of leisure practices which create new forms of sociabilities,” The scope of Turcot’s research encompasses https://www.facebook.com/turcotlaurent Turcot observes. Yet this phenomenon is in all these aspects of recreational activity. His https://twitter.com/LaurentTurcot fact nothing new. As Turcot’s research shows, studies centre on Paris and London, and the ways in which sports and leisure activities explore cultural transfers both between these LAURENT TURCOT holds the Canada shape identity and define behaviour today two cities and to metropolitan areas of North Research Chair in the History of are founded in the major socioeconomic America and Canada where both cities were Leisure and Entertainment. He is a transformations of Western society that took seen as models for emulation. Professor in History at the Université place after the 16th Century. du Québec à Trois-Rivières. He KEY SPORTING INFLUENCES specialises in urban leisure culture from the 16th to 19th DEVELOPMENT AND TRANSFER OF A NEW Turcot attributes his interest in the connection Centuries, especially in the cultural transfer of and EUROPEAN CULTURE between sports and leisure and social and sociability in theatres, cafés, cabarets and promenades. Between the 16th and 19th Centuries, medico- individual identity to two influential figures His most notable publications include Le promeneur à scientific knowledge grew exponentially. in his childhood. The first was his father, Paris au XVIIIe siècle (Gallimard, 2007) and with Jean- This was also a period of industrialisation, who had a keen interest in ice hockey. “He Clément Martin, Au cœur de la Révolution: les leçons urbanisation and democratisation in Western extolled the wonders of the early heroes who d’histoire d’un jeu vidéo (Vendémiaire, 2015). Europe, which led to the emergence of new made hockey into a strong, powerful and societal norms and values. Social visibility and exciting sport that kindled our nationalist connections became increasingly important; fervour,” Turcot explains. The second was his exercise was seen as healthy and new symbolic cousin, a devoted fan of Paris St Germain, by cultural references were formed. Meanwhile, whom he was coached in the lore of French perspectives on use of time changed, giving football teams and stars (his cousin termed way to the innovative notion that there should this ‘footballistic science’) on annual visits to be free, non-working time even for the France to see his mother’s family. “Hockey common people, which could be filled with and soccer made me dream and reminded leisure activities. me that the thrill far outweighs everything else: money, drama, doping, corruption, In line with this, the built urban environment hooliganism, violence and local or national began to change, to accommodate cafés, music exaltation,” he reflects. venues, pleasure gardens, boulevards, spas and more theatres. For example, in 18th Century For Turcot, leisure practices cannot be divorced Paris, promenades offering new vistas of the from the societies and cultures which created city were built. This led to the emergence of and organised them. He has written the first promeneurs and flâneurs – that is, ‘walkers’ ever chronologically organised synthesis of or ‘saunterers’ – and ultimately to the café the essential links between sports and leisure culture for which Paris is still famed, as well activities, from the days of Ancient Greece and as new paradigms for ideal cityscapes and Rome up to the 21st Century. The book will be urban architecture. published by Gallimard later in 2016.