The Politics of Leisure


Book Description

This book explores entanglements between politics and leisure, ranging from the electorate’s concerns with public recreation resources, to the presence of politics in casual conversation, and to the use of leisure as a means of preserving racial hierarchies in society. In noting the contributions of past scholarship, it also points toward a trend of increasingly political leisure research, where research helps to unpack the multiple ways in which power suffuses the experience of leisure. A contrast between ‘being political’, on one hand, and the tribal politicization that characterizes much of contemporary social life, on the other hand, demonstrates that scholars and educators can and should be engaged in politically-oriented scholarship, while also building a more diverse and intellectually productive academy. This edited volume will be of great interest to researchers and scholars interested in race, power, polarization, and the interrelationship between politics and leisure. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Leisure Sciences.




The New Politics of Leisure and Pleasure


Book Description

This book is about the new politics of leisure and pleasure - the values, practices, struggles and contradictions that now characterize the social worlds of rambling, drinking, tourism, sex, watching TV, gambling, using the internet, reading, comedy, sport, popular music and censorship.




Tourism and Leisure Mobilities


Book Description

This book reframes tourism, as well as leisure, within mobilities studies to challenge the limitations that dichotomous understandings of home/away, work/leisure, and host/guest bring. A mobilities approach to tourism and leisure encourages us to think beyond the mobilities of tourists to ways in which tourism and leisure experiences bring other mobilities into sync, or disorder, and as a result re-conceptualizes social theory. The proposed anthology stretches across academic disciplines and fields of study to illustrate the advantages of multi-disciplinary conversation and, in so doing, it challenges how we approach studies of movement-based phenomena and the concept of scale. Part One examines the ways in which mobility informs and is informed by leisure, from everyday practices to leisure-inspired mobile lifestyles. Part Two investigates individuals and communities that become entrepreneurial in the face of changing tourism contexts and reflects on the performance of work through multiple mobilities. Part Three turns to issues of development, with attention to the cultural politics that frame development encounters in the context of tourism. The varied ways that people move into and out of development projects is mediated by geopolitical discourses hat can both challenge and perpetuate geographic imaginations of tourism destinations.







Militant Around the Clock?


Book Description

During the 1970s, left-wing youth militancy in Greece intensified, especially after the collapse of the military dictatorship in 1974. This is the first study of the impact of that political activism on the leisure pursuits and sexual behavior of Greek youth, analyzing the cultural politics of left-wing organizations alongside the actual practices of their members. Through an examination of Maoists, Socialists, Euro-Communists, and pro-Soviet groups, it demonstrates that left-wing youth in Greece collaborated closely with comrades from both Western and Eastern European countries in developing their political stances. Moreover, young left-wingers in Greece appropriated American cultural products while simultaneously modeling some of their leisure and sexual practices on Soviet society. Still, despite being heavily influenced by cultures outside Greece, left-wing youth played a major role in the reinvention of a Greek “popular tradition.” This book critically interrogates the notion of “sexual revolution” by shedding light on the contradictory sexual transformations in Greece to which young left-wingers contributed.




Protests as Events


Book Description

Can activism be considered a leisure activity? Can the Occupy movement, local campaigns for change and lone acts of personal resistance be understood as events? Within the field of Events Management the content of events is generally analyzed within three categories—culture, sport or business. Such a typology can be helpful as a heuristic for interpretation and analysis within a commercial paradigm. However, this framework overlooks and depoliticizes a significant variety of events, those more accurately construed as protest. Protests as Events is the first book to explore activism as a leisure activity and protests as events; using a fresh interpretation of event to develop a new critical politics of events and leisure. Bringing together a range of cutting edge research from around the world, it explores a variety of protests through the lens of events studies and leisure in order to understand how the study of events management might be conceptualized in the protest space.




Serious Leisure


Book Description

Serious Leisure offers a comprehensive view and analysis of the current state of the sociology of leisure. Defining and differentiating the way people use their free time, Stebbins divides such activity into categories of serious, casual, and project-based leisure that he further separates into a variety of types and subtypes. Together they comprise what he calls "serious leisure." In this perspective, serious leisure constitutes systematic pursuit of an amateur, hobbyist, or volunteer activity sufficiently substantial and interesting in nature and requiring special skills, knowledge, and experience. Casual leisure, though immediately, intrinsically rewarding, is by contrast a relatively short-lived pleasurable activity, requiring little or no special training to enjoy it. Project-based leisure is a short-term, reasonably complicated, occasional creative undertaking carried out in free time. Stebbins sets out the basic concepts and propositions that make up the three forms, focusing on their essential elements. He takes stock of the serious leisure literature as well as that for casual and project-based leisure. Stebbins sees "serious leisure" realized by way of a set of foundational concepts--organization, community, history, lifestyle, and culture--and several of their component areas. He reviews the history and background of the concept of serious leisure and then adds historical commentary on, first, casual leisure and, then, project-based leisure. Finally, he examines the future and the importance of the serious leisure perspective in a globalizing world, and some of its critical links with other fields of knowledge and practice, notably the nonprofit sector and preventive medicine. Together with its original insights, Serious Leisure offers a single, handy, coherent, comprehensive resource. It will be of interest to sociologists, labor studies specialists, and economists.




Populism in Sport, Leisure, and Popular Culture


Book Description

This book examines and establishes the sociological relevance of the concept of populism and illuminates the ideological use of sport, leisure, and popular culture in socio-political populist strategies and dynamics. The first part of the book — Themes, Concepts, Theories — sets the scene by reviewing and evaluating populist themes, concepts, and theories and exploring their cultural-historical roots in and application to cultural forms such as mega-sports events, reality television programmes, and the popular music festival. The second part — National Contexts and Settings — examines populist elements of events and regimes in selected cases in South America and Europe: Argentina, Brazil, Greece, Italy, and England. In the third part — Trump Times — the place of sport in the populist ideology and practices of US president Donald Trump is critically examined in analyses of Trump’s authoritarian populism, his Twitter discourse, Lady Gaga at the Super Bowl, and populist strategy on the international stage. The book concludes with a discussion of the strong case for a fuller sociological engagement with the populist dimensions of sport, leisure, and popular cultural forms. Written in a clear and accessible style, this volume will be of interest to sociologists and social scientists beyond those specialising in popular culture and cultural politics of sport and leisure, as the topic of populism and its connection to popular cultural forms and practices has come increasingly into prominence in the contemporary world.




The Politics of Resentment


Book Description

“An important contribution to the literature on contemporary American politics. Both methodologically and substantively, it breaks new ground.” —Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare When Scott Walker was elected Governor of Wisconsin, the state became the focus of debate about the appropriate role of government. In a time of rising inequality, Walker not only survived a bitterly contested recall, he was subsequently reelected. But why were the very people who would benefit from strong government services so vehemently against the idea of big government? With The Politics of Resentment, Katherine J. Cramer uncovers an oft-overlooked piece of the puzzle: rural political consciousness and the resentment of the “liberal elite.” Rural voters are distrustful that politicians will respect the distinct values of their communities and allocate a fair share of resources. What can look like disagreements about basic political principles are therefore actually rooted in something even more fundamental: who we are as people and how closely a candidate’s social identity matches our own. Taking a deep dive into Wisconsin’s political climate, Cramer illuminates the contours of rural consciousness, showing how place-based identities profoundly influence how people understand politics. The Politics of Resentment shows that rural resentment—no less than partisanship, race, or class—plays a major role in dividing America against itself.




Politics and Leisure


Book Description

First published in 1988. This book provides a lucid and exceptionally well-informed account at the controversial relationship between politics and leisure. The author combines historical and sociological material to show the ways in which ‘leisure’ has often been a fiercely disputed battleground. Free time and free space have always posed a threat to political authorities, while providing room for experimentation and expression for the citizenry. This has led to extensive attempts at leisure regulation; John Wilson examines the purposes and effectiveness of such regulation in the fields of games sexuality, the mass media, and gambling. He is able to draw on evidence of leisure planning and policy from a wide variety of political regimes, from communist and socialist through social democrat to liberal, conservative, and fascist. The importance of the relationship between political forces and leisure, in subjects as disparate as the future of the Olympic games and the future of full employment, has rarely been so evident. John Wilson has provided an excellent guide to its intricacies.