LEAP 5 (2017)

Symposium  
on Julie Rose’s Free Time

GUEST EDITED BY TOM PARR



31 Tom Parr 

LEAP 5 (2017)

Symposium on Julie Rose’s Free Time:  
An Introduction 

TOM PARR
University of Essex

In the United Kingdom, more than thirty percent of those in paid 
employment express a desire to work fewer hours. Some of these individuals 
are willing to accept a corresponding reduction in pay, but others cannot 
countenance such a sacrifice: economic security must take priority.1 
Moreover, these attitudes are by no means unique to the UK, with many 
people across the world feeling that they spend too much of their time at 
work. But things do not have to be this way. Policymakers have at their 
disposal a variety of tools that can reduce working hours and, more 
generally, enhance the amount of free time that citizens enjoy. These 
include direct measures, such as working time regulations and the 
provision of free childcare, and indirect measures, such as policies that 
strengthen the power of trade unions. 

In Free Time, Julie L. Rose persuasively argues that governments should 
make greater use of these tools. She does this, first, by establishing the case 
for a right to a fair share of free time; and second, by showing that, in order 
to protect this right, it is necessary to do more than regulate society’s 
distribution of income and wealth. Rose’s book makes important 
contributions to our understanding of the concept of “free time”, the 
nature of citizens’ rights to free time, and the moral status of available 
instruments for ensuring that free time is distributed fairly. This 
Symposium brings together a series of thought-provoking papers that 
explore Rose’s arguments in further detail in order to advance the debate 
around the equitable distribution of free time, as well as a range of related 
issues. 

Rose opens the Symposium with a short precis of her book, which acts 
as a useful introduction to the discussions that follow. The first commenter 
is Robert E. Goodin, who addresses the problem of how to conceptualise 
discretionary time. More specifically, Goodin takes issue with what he 
calls the “empirical inscrutability” of Rose’s account, and appeals to this 
concern to motivate support for his preferred alternative, which makes use 
of “social benchmarking”. 

1	 For	recent	data,	see	Office	for	National	Statistics	(2018).	

D OI : 10. 310 0 9/L E A P. 2017.V 5.02



 Symposium on Julie Rose’s Free Time: An Introduction 32

LEAP 5 (2017)

The next two articles focus on Rose’s claim that citizens have a right to 
a fair share of free time. Jeppe von Platz attempts to expose a serious 
ambiguity in Rose’s arguments: either she relies on a “vacuous notion of 
fairness” or, contrary to what Rose claims to have established, what 
citizens can claim is merely an adequate share of free time. Lucas 
Stanczyk then draws attention to the possibility that many aff luent 
citizens who complain about being overworked – and who complain 
more than others about being overworked – are not in fact denied their 
fair share of free time. Stanczyk concludes by ref lecting upon the 
implications of this possibility for the justifiability of the policies that 
Rose defends. 

The final two commenters are Désirée Lim and Rosa Terlazzo. Lim’s 
task is to construct a republican case for granting citizens a fair share of 
free time, which can supplement Rose’s own argument. She builds her 
case by showing how citizens’ enjoyment of a fair share of free time can 
be instrumentally important to realising non-domination. Terlazzo 
employs Rose’s framework to draw attention to another neglected 
resource to which citizens might have claims, namely a “sense of moral 
entitlement to make use of basic liberties”. The Symposium concludes 
with a response from Rose that elaborates her view and that replies to the 
objections that have been raised.  

I hope that this Symposium advances our understanding of issues of 
considerable political concern, and that it prompts further discussion 
about the appropriate regulation of the labour market. I am grateful to 
the authors for their contributions, to the papers’ referees for their 
constructive feedback, and to Clare Burgum and Serena Olsaretti for all 
of their help.  

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Office for National Statistics, 2018: “EMP16: Underemployment and 
Overemployment” (Edition: February 2018).


	_GoBack