{"id":49078,"date":"2019-08-16T13:47:03","date_gmt":"2019-08-16T20:47:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=49078"},"modified":"2019-08-16T13:47:03","modified_gmt":"2019-08-16T20:47:03","slug":"the-fascinating-history-of-boredom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/the-fascinating-history-of-boredom\/","title":{"rendered":"The fascinating history of boredom"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\n\u201cI\u2019m bored\u201d is a statement many\u00a0parents dread hearing during the summer holidays<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Should parents scramble to fill the unstructured time of summer for their kids \u2014 so they don\u2019t complain of nothing to do (or worse, get into trouble)? Or should they allow children time, perhaps, to be bored?<\/p>\n

Indeed, today, the popular idea exists, advanced by psychologists, management experts or innovators, that\u00a0boredom is important for the development of qualities such as creativity<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0brilliant ideas<\/a>. Boredom is not just viewed as something to be avoided, but also something to be actively cultivated for its potential.<\/p>\n

Scholars link the emergence of the term boredom\u00a0to European industrial modernity, repetitive labour, the standardization of time \u2014 and the related rise of the concept of leisure time<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Regulating time\u00a0was fundamental to the emergence and development of industrial capitalism<\/a>. Since at least the 17th century, western political, legal and religious authorities emphasized the need to use\u00a0time productively while constructing racialized, class-related and gendered ideas of laziness and idleness.<\/a><\/p>\n

My study focuses on boredom in Canada following the Second World War into the 1980s. I examine boredom in relation to discussions of capitalism, productivity and emotional regulation, along with historical understandings of the emotion as both negative and positive.<\/p>\n

In the period I\u2019m studying, cultural and academic discussions and commentary about boredom popped up in a variety of contexts pertaining to different populations and social groups.<\/p>\n

Postwar Canada boredom<\/h4>\n

Historian Shirley Tillotson, professor emerita at University of King\u2019s College, chronicles how during the mid-20th century in Canada, in response to advocacy responding to poor labour conditions,\u00a0legislators passed laws to limit work time and institute increased leisure time<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But through the late 1950s until the 1970s,\u00a0scholars and cultural commentators also worried that free time could become too abundant<\/a>and might lead to increased boredom. Cultural discussions of the dangers of boredom drew on longer-standing political, legal and religious debates grounded in middle-class views of moral behaviour related to\u00a0policing the leisure time of working class people<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the post-war period, men and women returned from their respective war roles and back into routines changed through processes of automation or new technologies, both in jobs\u00a0and domestic life<\/a>. In the early 60s, advice columnists wrote about boredom in marriage in papers like the\u00a0Winnipeg Tribune<\/em>. Many of these columns dealt with the particular\u00a0boredom and challenges experienced by women in the home<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Concerns surrounding boredom in marriage reflected\u00a0post-war anxieties surrounding an idealized so-called \u201cnormal\u201d family<\/a>, which entailed a focus on rigid gender roles, white middle-class sensibilities and worries about youth deviancy and delinquency. In my preliminary research I\u2019ve found that in the post-war years and beyond, media and cultural commentary in Canada reflected\u00a0popular portrayals of aimless and dangerous teenagers<\/a>:\u00a0youth boredom was viewed as a contributor to crime, thus needing to be curbed.<\/a><\/p>\n

Yet some also fretted that while leisure time could breed boredom,\u00a0so could paid employment<\/a>. Since the early 20th century, psychologists and management experts have been interested in\u00a0regulating work boredom<\/a>, and have studied the relationship between boredom, work and personality.<\/p>\n

Radical boredom<\/h4>\n

Though less common, western thinkers have also explored boredom as something potentially positive.<\/p>\n

In his 1924 essay on boredom, the German writer Siegfried Kracauer presents two\u00a0distinct forms of boredom<\/a>. Kracauer was a\u00a0film theorist<\/a>\u00a0who is sometimes associated with\u00a0the Frankfurt School<\/a>, a group of intellectuals who addressed modernity, culture and capitalist society.
\nKracauer wrote as a response to social changes brought about by industrial modernity, including repetitive factory work, increased technologization and the emergence of mass advertising. He suggests one form of boredom is related to the drudgery of everyday modern life, and a hollowing out of a person\u2019s subjectivity.<\/p>\n

The other form of boredom Kracauer discusses \u2014 what he calls true or radical boredom \u2014 is linked to quiet leisure time where one might recognize the bombardments and oppressions of modern life. Kracauer sees this second form of boredom as a site of radical political potential.<\/p>\n

This sense of boredom as a site of potential for change or inspired action also has roots in the western intellectual tradition. In the Renaissance and Romantic periods,\u00a0writers discussed melancholia<\/a>\u00a0as a form of discontent linked to intelligence and creativity that they associated with the sensibilities of poets and philosophers.<\/p>\n

If we consider the desire to regulate boredom \u2014 the need to avoid or eradicate it \u2014 in light of Kracauer\u2019s notion of radical boredom, we might speculate that part of the desire to regulate the emotion is linked to anxieties surrounding what boredom might lead to.<\/p>\n

Indeed, one of the reasons industrial psychologists during the early-20th century saw boredom as a problem was because it might result in labour unrest:\u00a0trouble for the capitalist, but possibility for the worker<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If boredom is also a site of potential, perhaps it needn\u2019t be so dreaded.<\/p>\n

These final weeks of summertime might be a chance to let\u00a0kids experience the potential of boredom<\/a>, to explore what might emerge.<\/p>\n

But heads up, there could be trouble for the parent \u2014 or proposed changes to daily family life and routines.<\/p>\n

Author Bio:<\/strong> Michelle Fu is a PhD student, Department of History at the University of Toronto<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI\u2019m bored\u201d is a statement many\u00a0parents dread hearing during the summer holidays. Should parents scramble to fill the unstructured time of summer for their kids \u2014 so they don\u2019t complain of nothing to do (or worse, get into trouble)? Or should they allow children time, perhaps, to be bored? Indeed, today, the popular idea exists, […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":49079,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[95],"tags":[295370],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-49078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-boredom"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe fascinating history of boredom - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/the-fascinating-history-of-boredom\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The fascinating history of boredom - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cI\u2019m bored\u201d is a statement many\u00a0parents dread hearing during the summer holidays. 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