The second approach focuses upon the nat-
ure of leisure activities. This approach points
to the significance of leisure both economically
and in shaping personal identities. Classic
critical theoryargued that nothing was as
abhorrent tocapitalas ‘free time’ and that
leisure was its commodification into a product
to be bought and sold. Originally, criticism
focused on thefordistmass production of
homogeneous leisure products. Adorno and
Horkheimer, in theDialectic of the Enlighten-
ment, argued that
amusement under late capitalism is the pro-
longation of work. .. mechanization has
such a power over man’s leisure and happi-
ness, and so profoundly determines the
manufacture of amusement goods, that his
experiences are inevitably after-images of
the work process itself. (1979, p. 137)
Later work has argued that in a post-
fordistorpostmodernworld these patterns
fragment and their meaning changes. Thus
many analysts point to the emergence of
social groups defined not by work identities
but by shared leisure activities, such as dif-
ferent kinds of music or skateboarding, as
subcultures or neotribes (Maffesoli, 1995).
Others point to the emergence of a service-
led ‘experience economy’, where we move
from selling tangible products to consuming
the memory of an event or experience (Pine
and Gilmore, 1998). mc
Suggested reading
Gershuny (2000); Koshar (2002); Maffesoli
(1996).
liberalism The view that individual freedom
should be the basis of human life. Liberals
believe that human well-being is maximized
when individuals are free to pursue their
own interests provided that doing so causes
no harm to others. According to classical lib-
eralism, thestateshould be as small as pos-
sible and only as strong as is necessary to
maintain the conditions that will safeguard
individual liberty. Liberal models ofcitizen-
shipthus emphasize the formalequalityof all
citizens, civilrights, the rule of law and the
protection of individuals from the arbitrary
exercise of statepower. Much debate within
liberalism has been concerned with how to
deal with conflicts of interest between individ-
uals. Liberal models ofdemocracyemphasize
the expression of individual preferences
through voting. In economics, liberalism
favours private ownership and production
and market mechanisms of resource alloca-
tion, based on the non-coerced interactions
of individual producers and consumers.
Liberalism has been highly influential. All
the world’s major industrialized countries are,
formally at least, liberal democracies with
market economies. In practice, however, their
political institutions and economic systems
rarely come close to liberal models, and in
many places even basic civil rights are under
threat in the name of the ‘war on terror’. The
governments of some other countries, most
notably China, have explicitly eschewed liberal
democracy, although market mechanisms have
been widely adopted in the economic arena.
Despite its apparent globalhegemony, lib-
eralism has been subject to many critiques and
challenges (see, e.g.,anarchism;communi-
tarianism; environmentalism; fascism;
feminism; marxism; post-colonialism;-
socialism). According to some contemporary
defenders of liberalism, religious fundamental-
ism (seereligion) poses the principal political
threat to liberalism in the early twenty-first
century. For others, there are inherent limits
to liberalism and it is time to chart the con-
tours of post-liberalism (Gray, 1996) or to
push the democratizing impulse in liberalism
in more radical and pluralist directions (see
radical democracy).
Geographers have contributed to debates
about liberalism in numerous areas. Much
research has focused onneo-liberalism:the
widespread revival of liberal economics since
the 1970s and its application to public policy by
national governments and international
organizations (Harvey, 2005). Work on geog-
raphies of thebodyhas questioned the concept
of the sovereign and autonomous individual.
Geographers have also engaged extensively
with debates about rights and citizenship, focus-
ing on the differential socio-spatial distribution
of rights and obligations. The fundamental lib-
eral distinction between theprivate and public
sphereshasbeendestabilizedbygeographical
research into the fluidity and porosity of the
public/private boundary. The universalizing im-
peratives of liberalism have been challenged by
geographers charting the geopolitics of humani-
tarian and military intervention (Smith, 2006b).
Studies of the geographies ofgovernmentality
have revealed how liberalgovernanceinvolves
what Nikolas Rose (1999c) calls ‘powers offree-
dom’. In this view, freedom is a mechanism of
governance, rather than its antithesis. jpaSuggested reading
Gray (1995); Kelly (2005).Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_L Final Proof page 417 31.3.2009 2:44pmLIBERALISM