MATURA ENGLISH: Hobbies & Interests

• Hobbies are regular activities done for enjoyment during leisure time, which can include collecting, creative pursuits, sports, or other amusements
• Participation in hobbies encourages acquiring substantial skills and knowledge in that area
• Hobbies tend to follow trends in society
• In the 19th and 20th centuries stamp collecting was popular, while in 2024 video games became more popular
• Increased leisure time due to 19th-century production and technology led to greater investment in hobbies

Hobby Classifications

• Casual leisure is intrinsically rewarding, short-lived, and requires little or no preparation
• Serious leisure is the systematic pursuit of an amateur, hobbyist, or volunteer activity that is substantial and rewarding
• Project-based leisure is a short-term, often one-off, rewarding project

Hobby Etymology

• In the 16th century, "hobby" meant "small horse and pony"
• By 1816, "hobby" entered the vocabulary, associated with recreation and leisure
• In the 17th century, the term was used pejoratively, suggesting it was a childish pursuit
• In the 18th century, with more industrial society, hobbies gained respectability
• A hobby is also called a pastime
• Hobbies are practiced regularly for interest and enjoyment, rather than financial reward

Hobby History

• Before the mid-19th century, hobbies were considered trivial with negative connotations
• By 1676, Sir Matthew Hale acknowledged that a "hobby horse" produces a legitimate sense of pride
• The cultural shift towards acceptance began in the mid-18th century as people had more leisure time
• There was concern that working people might not use their leisure time in worthwhile pursuits
• In the 1830s, efforts were made to provide alternatives to "bad habits" by cultivating rationality and intellect
• The book and magazine trade of the day encouraged worthwhile hobbies
• Manufacturing made materials used in hobbies cheap and responsive to hobbyists' interests
• In 1941, George Orwell identified hobbies as central to English culture, highlighting the "addiction to hobbies and spare-time occupations"

Hobby definition

• Deciding what to include in a list of hobbies provokes debate
• Hobbies are usually structured organized pursuits, with the pleasure of making or achieving something of value
• Hobbies take work and turn it into leisure, and take leisure and turn it into work
• A 2018 study identified "hobby" as most accurately describing activities associated with making or collecting objects, especially when done alone

Trends

• Cultural trends related to hobbies change with time
• In the 21st century the video game industry has been popular
• Stamp collecting declined along with the importance of the postal system
• Woodwork and knitting declined because manufactured goods provide cheap alternatives
• The internet has allowed traditional hobbies to flourish and support trading in a new environment

Hobbyists

• Hobbyists are part of a wider group of people engaged in leisure pursuits
• The Serious Leisure Perspective groups hobbyists with amateurs and volunteers
• Casual leisure is intrinsically rewarding, short-lived, and requires little or no preparation
• Serious leisure is the systematic pursuit of an amateur, hobbyist, or volunteer activity that is substantial and rewarding
• Project-based leisure is a short-term, often one-off, rewarding project
• Amateurs engage in pursuits that have a professional counterpart
• Hobbyists engage in collecting, making and tinkering, activity participation, sports and games, and liberal-arts hobbies
• Volunteers commit to organizations as guides, counselors, and gardeners
• Individual hobby pursuit often includes club memberships, organized sharing, and regular communication
• Some hobbies are of a communal nature, like choral singing and volunteering
• Children participate in hobbies because they are enthusiastic for collecting, making and exploring
• Growth in hobbies occurred during industrialization which gave workers set time for leisure
• Hobbies increased during the Depression because the unemployed had the time to be purposefully occupied
• Hobbies are often pursued by retired people because they have the time and seek intellectual and physical stimulation

Collecting Items

• Collecting includes seeking, locating, acquiring, organizing, cataloging, displaying, and storing
• Collecting is appealing because people enjoy categorizing and making order out of complexity
• Some collectors are generalists, others focus on a subtopic
• Collecting is an ancient hobby, with Caesar Augustus as a coin collector
• Sometimes collectors turn their hobby into a business trading in the items being collected
• Alternatives to physical objects include collecting records of events like train spotting, bird-watching, and aircraft spotting

Making and Tinkering

• Making and tinkering include self-motivated projects for fulfillment
• These projects may be progressive, irregular tasks performed over a long period
• Examples include building or restoring a car or building a computer from individual parts
• For computer savvy hobbyists, CNC machining may also be popular
• A CNC machine can be assembled and programmed to make different parts from wood or metal
• Tinkering is 'dabbling' with the making process, often applied to car repairs, furniture restoration, etc.
• Examples include scale modeling, model engineering, 3D printing, dressmaking, and cooking
• Scale modeling is making a replica of a real-life object in a smaller scale and dates back to prehistoric times
• At the turn of the Industrial Age and through the 1920s, some families could afford things such as electric trains, wind-up toys, and the increasingly valuable tin toy soldiers
• Scale modeling as we know it today became popular shortly after World War II
• Model engineering refers to building functioning machinery in metal
• This is a demanding hobby that requires a multitude of large and expensive machine tools
• It originated in the United Kingdom in the late 19th century
• 3D Printing is a relatively new technology and already a major hobby as the cost of printers has fallen sharply
• 3D modeling is the process of making mathematical representations of three dimensional items and is an aspect of 3D printing
• Dressmaking has been a major hobby up until the late 20th century in order to make cheap clothes, but also as a creative design and craft challenge
• Cooking is a hobby, a challenge and a source of significant satisfaction for some people
• In the early 21st century the importance of cooking as a hobby was demonstrated by the high popularity of competitive television cooking programs

Activity Participation

• Activity participation includes partaking in "non-competitive, rule-based pursuits"
• Outdoor pursuits are the group of activities which occur outdoors
• These hobbies include gardening, hill walking, hiking, backpacking, cycling, canoeing, climbing, caving, fishing, hunting, target shooting, wildlife viewing, watersports, and snowsports

Gardening

• One large subset of outdoor pursuits is gardening
• Residential gardening most often takes place in or about one's own residence
• Gardening also takes place in non-residential green areas, such as parks, public or semi-public gardens
• Indoor gardening is concerned with growing houseplants within a residence or building
• Water gardening is concerned with growing plants that have adapted to pools and ponds, along with aqua-scaping in planted aquariums
• Container gardening is concerned with growing plants in containers that are placed above the ground

Liberal Arts Pursuits

• Many hobbies involve performances by the hobbyist
• Examples include singing, acting, juggling, magic, dancing, playing a musical instrument, martial arts, and other performing arts
• Some hobbies may result in an end product, such as woodworking, photography, moviemaking, jewelry making, software projects and home music or video production
• Writing is often taken up as a hobby by aspiring writers
• Reading books, eBooks, magazines, comics, newspapers, and browsing the internet is a common hobby
• Knitting or Crocheting is a calming and productive hobby

Sports and games

• Stebbins distinguishes an amateur sports person and a hobbyist by suggesting a hobbyist plays in less formal sports
• While an amateur sports individual plays a sport with a professional equivalent
• Amateur sport may range from informal play to highly competitive practice, such as deck tennis or long distance trekking
• The Department for Culture, Media, and Support in England suggests that playing sports benefits physical and mental health

Psychological role

• There was extensive research into the important role that play has in human development
• Studies of aging and society support the value of hobbies in healthy aging

Significant achievements

• Amateur astronomers have explored the skies for centuries
• Amateur astronomers Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp discovered the Comet Hale–Bopp in 1995
• A substantial amount of early scientific research came from the amateur activities of the wealthy
• Open-source is a development model using open collaboration to cooperate on projects
• Nature observation practitioners from the 1930s went on to become the pioneers of the conservation movement that flourished in the UK from 1965 onwards