The SAGE Dictionary of Leisure Studies

Tony Blackshaw, Garry Crawford

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781473946040
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Travel

What is Leisure Studies? Who are the key figures in the field? How can we evaluate the relevance of concepts in the field?

This is the first full length Dictionary of Leisure Studies. It examines the key concepts, assesses the work of central figures and helps students zero-in on essential issues and conceptual distinctions.

The Book:

• Provides an unprecedented critical survey of the field

• Offers students authoritative, comprehensive accounts of the basic concepts and leading figures

• Provides students with core resources to write essays and pass exams

Written by teachers experienced with the needs of undergraduates and postgraduates in the field, the book will be quickly recognized as a vital asset in making sense of Leisure Studies.

A

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A AND B ANALYSIS

This is a heuristic mode of investigation concerned with individuals’ freedom to make leisure choices and the different ways in which they compete to achieve certain leisure ends. To this extent it is concerned with the characteristics of power relations in leisure. The central tenets of A and B analysis are implied in many studies of leisure relations, especially those which focus their attention on individual choices and tastes. At the most basic level, A and B analysts would be concerned with, for example, why A might choose to go to the pub against the wishes of B, who wants to stay in and watch a DVD, and how this might cause conflict in their relationship. More complicated applications also explore the multifaceted nature of relationships and the possibility of resolution and cooperation between individuals and social groups.

However, like game theory, A and B analysis is an unsatisfactory perspective on power relations because it fails to account for the structural inequalities and cleavages linked to political attitudes and cultural identification. These observations notwithstanding, Rojek offers a revised understanding for leisure studies which suggests that, by being more alert to the processes that accompany social stratification and how these are embedded and embodied in social interaction, we can develop clearer insights into the workings of leisure relations in terms of ‘the motivation of actors, the location of trajectories of behaviour and the context of action’ (2005: 25).

Tony Blackshaw

Associated Concepts Game Theory; Leisure Bodies; Power; Rojek, Chris.

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ABNORMAL LEISURE

The idea of abnormal leisure might be understood as the designation for all that is strange and deviant, unbridled and tempestuous and which in many cases is likely to be an infraction of the criminal law. It also constitutes the outlandish leisure pursuits that we are illicitly attracted to, but also fear and dare not try to fathom, yet we are often nonetheless fascinated enough to try these out. To this extent, abnormal leisure is the example par excellence of the unresolved, disturbing forms of our desires and fantasies, which are explored to good effect by Ken Kalfus in his post-9/11 novel A Disorder Peculiar to the Country. This not so simple story of adultery demonstrates how the psychology of domestic attrition stands for the paroxysm – the whole dying world of US security – as New Yorkers indulge in ‘terror sex’ in order to gain social advantage, and where the highest thrill is to bed somebody who survived the twin towers or served emergency duty in their aftermath.

Contextualizing his core argument around the concepts of liminality, edgework and surplus energy, Rojek (2000) outlines three key types of abnormal leisure: invasive, mephitic and wild leisure. Invasive leisure focuses on abnormal behaviour associated with selfloathing and self-pity and the ways in which disaffected individuals experience anomie and personal alienation from the rest of society through drink, drug or solvent abuse in order that they can ‘turn their back on reality’. Mephitic leisure encompasses a wide range of pursuits and activities, from mundane encounters with prostitutes to the buzz of murdering through serial killing. To this extent mephitic leisure experiences involve the individual’s self-absorbed desire for gratification at the expense of others. The reason why Rojek calls these leisure activities and pursuits mephitic is that they are generally understood to be ‘noxious’, ‘nasty’, ‘foul’ and ‘morally abhorrent’ by most ‘normal’ people, because they cause major offence to the moral order of things.

Rojek’s third category is wild leisure, which involves limit-experiences through edgework and as such this tends to be opportunistic in character. But very much like mephitic leisure it involves the individual’s self-absorbed desire for instant gratification. The experience of ‘limit’ is the name of the game with wild leisure, which includes deviant crowd behaviour such as rioting, looting and violence, particularly at sports events. Rojek also suggests that new technology presents individuals intent on pursuing wild leisure with ever more opportunities for instant gratification, typically in the form of video clips of anything from violence in sport to genocide, which supplies individuals with the vicarious ‘delight of being deviant’ (Katz, 1988).

There is an ‘ethical’ divide about the relative merits of the concept of abnormal leisure in leisure studies. Criticizing Rojek’s work, Cara Aitchison has argued that ‘violence, abuse and violations of human rights may well play a part in exploitative leisure relations but these acts themselves are not acts of leisure – they are acts of violence and should be named and researched as such’ (quoted in Rojek, 2000: 167).

However, Rojek barks at the notion that we should ignore these kinds of leisure activities. In his view abnormal leisure may belong to the forbidden and the deadly, but it should not escape the notice of scholars of leisure that it is leisure all the same. Hannah Arendt coined the expression ‘banality of evil’ in order to bring to our attention the shocking ordinariness of such activities. In the light of Arendt’s perceptive observation we can conclude that Rojek is merely tearing off leisure studies’ veil of respectability to reveal what lurks in the hearts and minds of a good many men and women, which enables him to say something important about the infinite playfulness of the human mind. The mirror image this holds up to the rest of humankind may not be an ideal picture – it can frequently be dreadful and upsetting and often even morally repugnant – but, as Rojek makes clear, it is leisure all the same.

Tony Blackshaw

Associated Concepts Addictions; Desire; Deviance; Edgework; Football Hooliganism; Liminality; Rojek.

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ACCULTURATION

This term emerged from cultural anthropology and has two principal and connected meanings. At its most basic level the concept of acculturation refers to the ways in which different cultures interact. The second, more sophisticated meaning, focuses on the process whereby different cultural (and we might say leisure) groups act together to create new cultural patterns, which may, or may not, create tensions or struggles between the old and new.

In recent years postcolonial critics, who are concerned with the effects of colonization and imperialism on the least powerful cultures and societies, and especially those in the poorest parts of the world, have suggested that, as with many other concepts from cultural anthropology, acculturation is limited by its quietism about the contested and uneven nature of cultural exchange, which often means the incorporation of minority cultures into the dominant hegemony of the Western cultural system. For that reason Bhabha (1994) replaces the concept with the idea of hybridity, which, as well as acknowledging the shifting expressions associated with ostensibly fixed cultural traditions, refers to the synergies of new transcultural forms – artistic, ethnic, linguistic, literature, musical, political, and so on and so forth – that emerge within the contact zones between cultures. According to Bhabha it is the ‘in-between’ or third space of these synergies that ultimately carries both the weight and the meaning of culture.

Notwithstanding the obvious strengths of Bhabha’s critique, with the accelerated pace of globalization and associated technological change, it is becoming increasingly difficult to identify the unequal processes of cultural exchange associated with processes of acculturation, which are not only rarely fixed to specific localities but are also often transitory. To return once again to the topic of postcolonialism, take, for example, the traditional Punjabi musical and dance form of Bhangra, which many young Asian musicians in Britain have fused with a vast range of other musical forms (often hybrids themselves), such as disco, techno, house, raga, jungle and hip hop, to create new sounds and dance forms that are now being re-exported back to Asia.

Tony Blackshaw

Associated Concepts Edgework; Flow; Globalization; Hegemony; Liminality; Power; Racism and Leisure; Structure of Feeling.

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ACTION ANALYSIS

This is a term used to understand and account for the nature of purposive or intentional activities in leisure. Action theorists are centrally concerned with concepts like freedom, choice, respect and responsibility. However, despite its focus on voluntarism and individual agency, action analysis is not as ‘irredeemably individualistic’ as some of its critics imagine. By and large its practitioners pay due attention to the structuration of social relations (e.g., Giddens, 1984). Accordingly, Rojek (2005: 49) uses the term ‘to refer to grounded research that is committed to working with actors to understand leisure trajectories by exploring the interplay between location and context, and formulating leisure policies designed to achieve distributive justice, empowerment and social inclusion’.

Tony Blackshaw

Associated Concepts Action Research; Giddens; Individualization; Rojek, Chris Symbolic Interactionism.

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ACTION RESEARCH

According to its adherents action research is not simply another methodology in the narrow and broad meaning of ‘research methods’, but is better understood as an orientation to inquiry, which ‘has different purposes, is based in different relationships, and has different ways of conceiving knowledge and its relation to practice’ (Reason, 2003: 106). If action research has one specific goal, it is to bring about social change. This observation notwithstanding, it might be said that the emphasis of action research is not merely social change (e.g. increased participation in leisure activities that lead to better health and well-being) but it is also on articulating the world through new ways rather than being caught in the entrenched vocabularies of either social science or politics. Reason suggests that to this end action research ‘is an approach to human inquiry concerned with developing practical knowing through participatory, democratic processes in the pursuit of worthwhile human purposes, drawing on many ways of knowing in an emergent, developmental fashion’ (p. 108).

Action research is invariably locally based and it often has a community as well as organizational orientation. Either way one of its primary purposes is to produce practical knowledge that is useful to people in the everyday conduct of their own leisure lives. As has already been suggested, on a wider societal level, action research can also be seen as an approach to inquiry that seeks to bring about the increased social, psychological and economic well-being of individuals and communities.

Central to the idea of much action research is the idea of cogeneration and it is a mode of research which aims to build democratic, participative, pluralist communities of inquiry by ‘conscientizing’ individuals and community groups whose lives are circumscribed by social, cultural, economic and political inequalities (e.g., Freire, 1970). Herein action research points to a kind of praxis where theory and practice meet in a kind purposive action to interpret ‘practice’, to make sense of it and find as yet ‘hidden’ possibilities for change. In this way, action research also points to the possible in the sense that it signifies something that has not yet happened. The idea of possibility also signifies a refusal to be constrained within the limits of ‘how things seem to be’ (see Bauman, 1976), which means that action research is also suggestive of a socialist politics (rather than a Marxist politics) that seeks to alter the world in ways that cannot be achieved at the level of the individual. That said, practitioners are also alert to the tension that may exist between praxis and necessity, namely there is not going to be a revolution so we need to get on with changing our world for the better. In this second sense action research has close affinities with pragmatism.

Tony Blackshaw

Associated Concepts Class; Community; Community Action; Community Leisure; Marxism.

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ADDICTIONS

The term addiction is generally used to describe the compulsive behaviour of somebody who is burdened by their adherence to an activity or substance, normally a narcotic drug, which is regarded as individually or socially harmful. While psychological studies have predominately been concerned with pathological explanations for addictions, sociological studies have been more concerned with analysing them in so far as they are societal phenomena.

The symbolic interactionist perspective has proved to be perhaps the most important sociological influence on exploring the extent and consequences of addictive leisure. Rather than ascribing addictive behaviours to individual pathologies, symbolic interactionists have explored the social contexts in which individuals become addicted to certain leisure activities. The work of the American scholar Howard Becker (1953) best exemplifies this tradition. He explored the deviant ‘career’ associated with ‘Becoming a Marihuana User’, arguing that drug use is like any other leisure activity, a socially acquired taste developed as a response to social processes and social milieu.

The sociological work of Anthony Giddens utilizes more explicitly psychological explanations to suggest that, if the frenzy of addictions that marks the contemporary world does not differ from that which fell foul of twentieth-century sensibilities, addictions do seem to be more widespread. Reminiscent of Rojek’s work on abnormal leisure, Giddens outlines the specific characteristics of addictions, which could include anything from narcotic drug use to alcohol, from sex (his own topic) to high-risk leisure activities.

• The ‘high’: the ecstatic experience or the thrill of being taken out of themselves that individuals seek out when they are looking for a leisure experience that is set apart from the mundane characteristics of everyday life.
• The ‘fix’: when individuals are addicted to a specific leisure experience all efforts to achieve a ‘high’ soon become translated into the need for a ‘fix’.
• The ‘high’ and the ‘fix’: both can be understood as kinds of ‘time out’ when individuals are transported to another world. The upshot of this is that individuals may come to regard their ordinary day-to-day activities with ‘cynical amusement or even disdain’ or just the reverse – they might even generate a form of disgust towards their addictive pattern of behaviour.
• ‘Giving up’: the addictive leisure activity can also be understood as a kind of ‘giving up’, leading to the temporary abandonment of the care of the self. However, some forms of ‘high’ – those associated with flow, for example – might be understood by individuals as enabling them to penetrate the mystery of the self.
• The sense of ‘loss’: which is experienced in the aftermath of being taken out of oneself is often succeeded by feelings of embarrassment, shame and remorse.
• ‘Layering’: for all the apparent singularity of the ecstatic experience involved in individual highs, addictive experiences tend to be ‘layered’ in the individual’s psychological makeup and can lead to compulsive behaviour patterns.
• Ambivalence: the loss of the self and the kinds of self-disgust typical of addictions are not necessarily just about indulgence. The pathologies of self-discipline characteristic of addictions can swing in two directions. For example, bulimia (compulsive overeating) and anorexia (compulsive fasting) are two sides of the same coin: each can coexist in the addictive behaviours of the same individual.

Tony Blackshaw

Associated Concepts Abnormal Leisure; Deviance; Extreme Leisure; Flow; Giddens; ‘Into’, the; Liminality; Symbolic Interactionism.

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ADORNO, THEODOR

(critical theory)

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AESTHETICS

Derived from the Greek words aisthētikos, which means ‘perceptible by the senses’, and aisthēsthai, which means ‘to perceive’, aesthetics, as it is understood in Western philosophy, is concerned with beauty in the arts and nature. The science of aesthetics, on the other hand, understands beauty as something absolute, which has the power to overwhel...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgement
• Introduction
• The Sage Dictionary of Leisure Studies
• Bibliography
• Index