RUcore Resource Object
RUcore Resource Object
TitleAmerican boredom
NameStacey, Chris (author), Lears, T.J. Jackson (chair), Fabian, Ann (internal member), Matsuda, Matt (internal member), Brier, Stephen (outside member), Rutgers University, Graduate School - New Brunswick,
Degree Date2011-10
Date Created2011
SubjectHistory,
Boredom--United States—History—19th century,
Boredom--United States—History—20th century,
Leisure--United States--History--19th century,
Leisure--United States--History--20th century
DescriptionAmericans did not always complain about feeling bored. This dissertation explains how the concept of boredom emerged in the United States and why it became a normative feature of everyday life. Boredom is often conceived as a human emotion, as a constant,
transhistorical attribute, consisting of stable, innate traits. This is not the case. A long process of social interactions with discourses representing the experience of boredom, the types of “problems” caused by its effects, and the solutions proposed to eradicate it,
resulted in boredom becoming a culturally constructed emotion by the mid-twentieth century. In the late nineteenth century, a discourse about rationalized industry and the social problems caused by the effects of monotony on industrial workers appeared in
popular culture. The “problem of monotony” became intertwined with cultural concerns over the threat or promise of leisure—a set of ideas that by the mid-twentieth century became a capacious category used to explain deviant behavior and simultaneously offer the promise of therapeutic self-fulfillment in consumer culture. As popular and scientific discourses converged in the 1920s with post-World War I cultural trends, many Americans, across all classes, started to believe boredom was a natural aspect of “modern” life and not simply a very human response to repetitive work. Boredom became permanently established in American society as an undesirable experience and
was represented as causing a range of aberrant behaviors requiring adjustment to social
norms. In the world of work, industrial psychologists sought to increase industrial efficiency and diminish employee unrest. They created a scientific paradigm where boredom was cast as a pathological condition, a set of psychological symptoms overlapping with descriptions of depression. In the 1930s—when social scientists and big business found cost-effective ways to “solve” the pathological problem of boredom— theory and practice were synthesized, and a therapeutic response to tedium became the basis for vast social, economic, and personal changes. Sustained psychological research initiated the medicalization of boredom, the prescription of pharmaceuticals as an
antidote, and the use of background music in industry as a form of “therapy” to pacify workers and increase their productivity.
transhistorical attribute, consisting of stable, innate traits. This is not the case. A long process of social interactions with discourses representing the experience of boredom, the types of “problems” caused by its effects, and the solutions proposed to eradicate it,
resulted in boredom becoming a culturally constructed emotion by the mid-twentieth century. In the late nineteenth century, a discourse about rationalized industry and the social problems caused by the effects of monotony on industrial workers appeared in
popular culture. The “problem of monotony” became intertwined with cultural concerns over the threat or promise of leisure—a set of ideas that by the mid-twentieth century became a capacious category used to explain deviant behavior and simultaneously offer the promise of therapeutic self-fulfillment in consumer culture. As popular and scientific discourses converged in the 1920s with post-World War I cultural trends, many Americans, across all classes, started to believe boredom was a natural aspect of “modern” life and not simply a very human response to repetitive work. Boredom became permanently established in American society as an undesirable experience and
was represented as causing a range of aberrant behaviors requiring adjustment to social
norms. In the world of work, industrial psychologists sought to increase industrial efficiency and diminish employee unrest. They created a scientific paradigm where boredom was cast as a pathological condition, a set of psychological symptoms overlapping with descriptions of depression. In the 1930s—when social scientists and big business found cost-effective ways to “solve” the pathological problem of boredom— theory and practice were synthesized, and a therapeutic response to tedium became the basis for vast social, economic, and personal changes. Sustained psychological research initiated the medicalization of boredom, the prescription of pharmaceuticals as an
antidote, and the use of background music in industry as a form of “therapy” to pacify workers and increase their productivity.
NotePh. D.
NoteIncludes bibliographical references
Noteby Chris Stacey
Genretheses
Persistent URLhttp://hdl.rutgers.edu/1782.1/rucore10001600001.ETD.000063656
Languageeng
CollectionGraduate School - New Brunswick Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Organization NameRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
RightsThe author owns the copyright to this work.