The Theory and Practice of the English Leisure Classes

Abstract

This bag of books about grandees and gentry, peers and plutocrats, servants and society is reminiscent of a bundle reviewed by Prof. Spring sixteen years ago. 1 Inevitably, books gathered together for such a purpose tend to be collected on a somewhat haphazard basis. But this particular comparison reveals much about developments in the historiography of the English upper classes over the last decade and a half. Apart from a few tantalizing articles, published work on the aristocracy by historians had hardly appeared at the time of Spring's review. 2 Eight of the books he examined were the annals of ageing aristocrats; four were concerned with society figures of the late-Victorian and Edwardian eras; and the last was an edited version of the letters of Lady Cunard to George Moore. Far from being works of historical scholarship themselves, they represented one kind 1 David Spring, 'The role of the aristocracy in the late nineteenth century', Victorian Studies, iv, 1 (i960).

Overtourism Dystopias and Socialist Utopias: Towards an Urban Armature for Dubrovnik

“…(Benić Penava & Matušić, 2012, p. 77) Dubrovnik's isolation from the main transport system created a unique situation where the political and wealthy classes would find this isolation of the elite resorts attractive, whereas at the same time it was difficult for the less wealthy to travel to Dubrovnik. Despite the extensive research on the leisure class in the western world (Burke, 1995;Cannadine, 1978;Cunningham, 2016;MacCannell, 1999;Munt, 1994;Roberts, 1997;Veblen, 2017) there is a misconception that the consumption of tourism and leisure was incompatible with communist ideals because "tourism appears at odds with a Marxist ideology that stressed egalitarianism and collective sacrifice in pursuit of a classless Utopia" (Rosenbaum, 2015, p. 158). However, travelling for leisure was subsidised and actively promoted by communist states such as the Soviet Union and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (part of which Croatia/Dubrovnik were) (Rosenbaum, 2015).…”