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.




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.







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.




The Politics of Leisure Policy


Book Description

The Politics of Leisure Policy provides a systematic account of the impact of social, economic and cultural change on the demand for leisure and of the response of politicians, professionals, and service providers. This substantially revised second edition has been updated throughout to reflect the changed realities of the post-Thatcher era, notably the impact of globalization and the search by New Labour for a "responsible market" approach to leisure policy and provision.




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.




The Politics of Leisure Policy


Book Description

Providing a comprehensive account of the major issues in relation to sports, arts and recreational policy in the 1990s, the book traces the relationship between local and central government and private provision, and the political ideologies which have shaped it, particularly of the New Right.




Protests as Events


Book Description

Protests as Events: Politics, Activism and Leisure is an edited collection that explores activism as a leisure activity and protests as events.




The Politics of Leisure


Book Description




Leisure, Sport and Tourism, Politics, Policy and Planning, 4th Edition


Book Description

The gap between theory and practice in the leisure, sport and tourism studies areas seems to have widened as scholars have become more specialized. Nevertheless, it is imperative that students be as familiar as possible with a wide range of social and political theory, and also be able to reconcile that knowledge with their own current and future roles as practicing professionals. As well as extensive updating of sources, this new edition examines such topics as libertarianism, theocracy, anti-establishment politics, and the concept of generations. A new chapter presents discussions of a number of 'issues and challenges' facing the leisure, sport and tourism sector. Introducing the subject for undergraduate and postgraduate students of leisure, sport and tourism, this book is also a useful addition to the shelf of any policy maker or practitioner within the industries.