Street Corner Society: Leisure Careers,Youth (Sub)culture and Social Exclusion

Abstract

This paper draws upon qualitative research with ‘socially excluded’ young people in the North East of England. It proposes that the concept and study of ‘leisure careers’ is useful in understanding the transitions, (sub)cultural experiences and identities of social groups like this. The empirical focus is upon the significance of leisure careers in the neighbourhood‐based, social networks of some criminally involved, socially excluded young adults. Theoretically, we argue that a focus on leisure careers, as part of a broad, holistic approach to youth transitions, can help overcome some of the problems that currently affect youth studies. In particular, fuller examination of shifting, leisure‐based activities and identities within studies of youth transition may help bridge the analytical divide between that tradition of youth research and that which focuses primarily on youth culture and identity.     

Leisure motivation of people with physical and visual disabilities in Ghana

Leisure motivation is central to the provision of leisure services especially to marginalised groups such as disabled people who may have different interests from non-disabled people. Using cross-sectional data from 536 people with physical and visual disabilities, this study assessed the leisure motivations of disabled people in Ghana. The findings suggest that the motivations of people with visual and physical disabilities were fourfold, namely competence mastery, social, intellectual, and stimulus avoidance. The influence of social motivation varied across marital status and household size, while stimulus avoidance varied by type of disability, sex, and employment status. Competence mastery and intellectual motivation varied across sex and income levels. It was concluded that the leisure motivations of disabled people in this study are based on their personal circumstances; they are heterogeneous. The study recommends that research on leisure motivation should be conducted with reference to specific context and interpreted in relation to the individual’s circumstances.     

'I can find my own Elder!' Cultural engagement as serious leisure for Aboriginal adults living in non-Aboriginal group homes

Leisure experiences for people with intellectual disabilities are often limited by influential dependency-laden assumptions found within disability service paradigms. Within a group home living environment, leisure can become even more constrained through the necessity to accommodate the desires, abilities, and needs of other residents as well as the time, duties, and available resources of the group home staff. For Canadian First Nations people with intellectual disabilities who may have been removed from their culture to be supported in a group living environment, cultural engagement needs to be purposeful and intentional as the desire to experience traditional activities is for more than simple pleasure, as explained by Stebbins’ concept of serious leisure. Using an ecological perspective, the purpose of the study was to (a) gain an understanding of the knowledge, experience, and meaning of Aboriginal culture to Aboriginal adults with intellectual disabilities living in a group home/supportive living setting, (b) become aware of the challenges experienced by the participants when connecting with their culture, and (c) develop strategies to address challenges presented so the participants can maintain/become further engaged in their culture. Using an Indigenist research framework to come to understand their experiences and ascribed meaning of Aboriginal culture, the participants were able to ‘Know’, ‘Be’, and ‘Do’ culture on their own terms. The strengths perspective may help to write a counter-story of possibility, hope, expectation and independence in response to a dominant grand narrative of inadequacy, hopelessness, underachievement and dependence which is typically the paradigmatic thinking associated with marginalised groups.     

Going to the movies: cinema development in Singapore

Using readings of Foucault's heterotropia and Friedberg's imaginary mobility, this paper analyses movie-going as leisure practice. In highlighting the paucity of research in this area, the paper argues that such practice should be understood as a symbolic interaction between people's behaviour and the spaces that they occupy. This theorization is applied to Singapore, where per capita movie-going is amongst the highest in the world. The paper illustrates how, in Singapore, the development of cinemas has been used to underpin land use policies associated with the relocation of residential areas and social policies related to the growth in consumerism. While effectively alienating older audiences, the paper argues that the spatial and cultural metonymy of the cinema with other primary consumption sites – the mall and the fast food outlet – offers young people reassurance about the growing centrality of consumerism to contemporary social life in Singapore. We argue that the cinema offers a temporary escape from the regulation of social life – access to ‘deviant’ space. However, this same consumerism that facilitates such access simultaneously denotes conformity with the dominant ideology: acceptance of the heterotropic possibilities – and limitations – of cinema and movie-going as leisure practice.     

The Relationship Between Father Involvement in Family Leisure and Family Functioning: The Importance of Daily Family Leisure

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between fathers’ involvement in family leisure and aspects of family functioning from both a father and young adolescent perspective. The sample consisted of fathers and their adolescent child from 647 families throughout the United States. Results from both the father and youth perspective indicated significant relationships between father involvement in both core and balance family leisure with family cohesion, family adaptability, and overall family functioning. Satisfaction with core family leisure that included the father's involvement was the single strongest predictor of all aspects of family functioning from both perspectives highlighting the importance of regularly occurring home-based family activities such as eating dinner together, participating in hobbies and informal sports or yard activities together, watching television together, or playing board games and video games together. Discussion and implications for fathers, families, practitioners, and future research are presented.     

The new economy as a gateway to leisure travelling: experiences of highly skilled Indian professionals in Europe

This article investigates India’s professionals’ tourist mobilities during on-site assignments in continental Europe. The concept of experiential cultural capital is introduced to highlight the sociocultural symbolic significance of experiences of travelling for leisure enabled by one’s professional career. The study (conducted between 2007 and 2013) is based on ethnographic research online and in-depth face-to-face interviews with 76 Indian expatriates working in the information, communication and technology (ICT) sector in Brussels. This complementary approach of online and offline research enabled the observation of practices of status distinction, which deepened the understanding of Indian professionals’ tourist mobility. The data of the lived experiences of leisure travelling enabled by professional career trajectories illustrate practices of capital accumulation. In addition, they show how India’s youth, inscribed in new economy sectors, such as the ICT sector, seize the volatile opportunities offered by changing global economic and political conditions. Moreover, this research indicates how occupational identity is intertwined with particular practices of leisure travelling as the organisational culture might influence leisure opportunities. Therefore, by participating in and managing this symbolic resource of tourist mobility, professionals signal their economic success to their family and peers in order to be recognised as such.     

Politicisation of migrant leisure: a public and civil intervention involving organised sports

Using the perspective of governmentality this article aims to contribute to an understanding of the rationalities of specific political interventions, and the techniques used to monitor the leisure activities of particular target groups. This process of politicization is revealed here through a case study of an intervention that provides sporting activities in holiday periods for migrant children and adolescents living in so-called socially disadvantaged areas (DGI Playground). The analysis highlights the rationality that the leisure time of migrant youth is a potentially dangerous time slot and they must be engaged in organized sports; that is not only healthy but also civilizing and character forming leisure time activities. Techniques of monitoring the intervention are developed in a partnership between public institutions, regional umbrella organizations and local sports clubs leading to a need for employment of welfare professionals. Furthermore, the article illustrates that in the discursive construction of subject positions for the target group, migrant youth tend to become clients and recipients of public services rather than potential members of civil sports clubs. These findings are supported by ethnographic interviews with participants that show how youngsters who took part in DGI Playground were able to reflect the official aim of the programme and relate this to their desire to have fun and hang out with their friends. The article ends with a discussion of the further scope of applying critical theoretical perspectives to studies of migrants’ leisure and sports activities.     

Giving young people a well-rounded education: a study of the educational goals parents attach to the leisure activities of their children

Policymakers strongly stimulate young people’s participation in organised leisure activities because it is believed to provide young people with important ‘work’ skills and attitudes. Special attention is paid to the underrepresented working-class youth. To stimulate (especially working-class) parents to play an active ‘guiding’ role, policymakers often assume that they have to be made aware of the educational benefits of engagement in leisure activities. The empirical basis of this assumption is, however, thin. Therefore, this study examined the educational goals middle- and working-class parents attach to their adolescents’ leisure activities on the basis of 32 interviews conducted in a small city in Belgium. Although there were subtle socio-economic differences in some goals parents pursued through their children’s leisure activities (i.e. teaching skills and societal values and norms, belonging to a peer group, independent thinking and relaxation), these were not of a magnitude that they could contribute to our understanding of socio-economic differences in parents’ role and in turn, in young people’s leisure use. We argue that further research needs to focus on socio-economic differences in available resources from which parents construct particular strategies to shape their young people’s leisure spending.     

Intimations of masculinities among young male sports bettors

This study explored intimations of masculinities within narratives of young Australian men who bet regularly on sport. Qualitative data collected from white, heterosexual Australian men aged 18–34 revealed their sports betting as characterised by four interrelated intimations of masculinities. Sports betting was portrayed as masculine leisure with the young men’s sports betting interest often influenced by older males and male peers. A foundation and context for social interactions among male peers, sports betting provided a backdrop for formative masculine identity construction. An entrenched male peer group norm, sports betting success produced cultural capital and subsequent social status by virtue of analytic skill, risk-taking and boisterous, competitive social interactions. However, sports betting was widely perceived as stigmatised leisure capable of prejudicing the young men’s prospective or existing intimate relationships with women. The young men negotiated this dilemma by adopting softer projections of masculinity in which sports betting was concealed in the presence of their spouse or prospective female partners. We therefore theorise sports betting as an augmentation to sport as a bastion for the construction of heteronormative masculinity, whilst lending further support to conceptualisations of masculine identities as plural and fluid.     

Sex and the (seventeenth‐century) city: a research note towards a long history of leisure

Sociability and sexuality have long been acknowledged by scholars as core aspects of leisure, but historical quotidian practices such as heterosociability among young people have remained elusive. Sociologists as well as historians have elevated the interrogation of leisure to a rich area of specialisation, but one with limited historical depth since their attention has primarily focused on the last 200 years, and especially – by historians’ standards – the very recent past. This research note explores the centrality of heterosexuality as a key to youth leisure culture in seventeenth‐century French cities to argue that the pre‐modern history of leisure needs to be complicated not only by questions about class and about clearer categories of labour and leisure, but by the topics of gender and sexuality that are strikingly absent from current literature.     

Health matters: the social impacts of street-involved youth’s participation in a structured leisure programme

In this ethnographically informed study, we used a Foucauldian approach to examine the social impacts of street-involved youth’s participation in a structured leisure programme. Our findings suggest that structured leisure activities help to facilitate social ties between the youth participants as well as the youth and programme staff/volunteers. Nevertheless, we found that structured leisure does not necessarily assist in the formation of relationships between street-involved youth and members of the mainstream community outside of the programme. We show how the ways the youth took up dominant discourses concerning street-involved youth and engaged with technologies of the self-influenced their social relationships and their ties to the community. These findings complicate our understanding of structured leisure’s potential benefits for street-involved youth.     

To be or to refuse to be? Exploring the concept of leisure as resistance for young people who are visually impaired

This study explored the concept of leisure as resistance to social constraints of blindness. Leisure, because of its relative freedoms, has been conceptualised as a forum in which dominant cultural discourses and stereotypes can be challenged or resisted. A post-structural analysis of the leisure narratives of five young people who are blind revealed that they intentionally used aspects of leisure to resist some constraints and stereotypes of disability. Three strategies were identified: advocacy, redefinition and passing. Advocacy targeted other people’s beliefs; yet, some activities done to resist dominant discourses actually perpetuated them. Redefinition was a covert strategy to show themselves that they could be the same as everyone else. Passing was used in different ways. One young person used it when advocating, another to maintain social connections. However, maintaining social connections by passing was often at the cost of enjoyment, engagement and perceptions of ability. Empowerment through resistance in leisure related primarily to gains in self-confidence. These gains in self-confidence have the potential to contribute to social interactions and perhaps influence some of the discourses that operate as ‘truths’ about people who are blind.     

Leisure,gender and family: the influence of social policy

A number of authors have recently called for reconsideration of the way in which gender and the family are investigated within leisure studies. This paper proposes that future analyses should include more explicit recognition of the ideological and practical influence of social policy on contemporary gender relations. The paper suggests that social policy has particular significance for debates within leisure studies, about the relationship between men and women's market and domestic labour, and their access to leisure. The paper investigates the influence of social policy on male and female adult life patterns through comparative analysis of social policy interventions and labour market outcomes in the economically advanced nations. It focusses on the policy stance in relation to paid work, especially maternal and paternal employment. It is shown that ‘family-related’ social policies universally support fathers' employment, but vary in the extent to which they encourage mothers' labour market activity. The implications of this for gender differentiation in leisure are explored through analysis of cross-national data for male and female sports participation in Europe. The analysis shows a strong correlation between gender discrimination in family-related social policy, and differentials in male-female sports participation rates. The paper next considers the implications of policy intervention for divergence within the female population. A detailed case study of the UK examines how family-related policy may differentially affect women in different socio-economic situations. The paper concludes that whether family-related policies encourage women to see themselves primarily as caregivers within the family unit, or as citizens with individualized rights, is likely to affect both their sense of entitlement to personal leisure and their ability to access it.     

体育旅游市场特征及产品开发

本文对体育旅游市场发展现状进行透视，认为这一旅游形式在当前我国旅游业发展中占有重要地位，进而对体育旅游动机进行分析，并将体育旅游市场划分为休闲、健身、观战、刺激、竞技和其他等细分市场，分析了这些细分市场具有潜力大、大众性强、市场面广、年轻化和前景好等特征，最后，阐述了体育旅游产品的特点和对旅游业发展的作用，并提出了体育旅游产品开发的对策。     

Research note: religious doctrine and its influence on the choice to gamble as a leisure pastime among African American Methodists

This research note examines the relationship between adherence to religious doctrine and participation in gambling as a leisure pastime. In the United States, recreational gambling is a common leisure pastime for many African Americans. Our ideals about the value of gambling are often shaped within families, based on their lived experience with recreational gambling and also within religious communities. Two doctrinal statements from the Methodist strand of Protestantism provide critical assessment of gambling as a leisure pastime. This case study examined African American Methodists’ perceptions about religious doctrine that addresses gambling; their choice to gamble despite their familiarity with the doctrinal position of the Church; and the perception of gambling as a sinful leisure pursuit. Religious doctrine may deter some adherents from participating in gambling as a leisure pursuit but not everyone. Many can be familiar with religious doctrine, may not agree with it and will proceed to gamble. Finally, even if gambling is perceived as a sinful leisure activity, it concurrently can be viewed as a ‘harmless’ vice.     

Equal Access to Integrated Resort Amenities for People With Disabilities

The integrated resort (IR) is a one-stop entertainment center that plays an increasing role in many gaming destinations. Despite this importance, no study has examined the visitor experiences of people with disabilities in visiting an IR. Accessible tourism calls for making it easy for all people to enjoy tourism experiences. Giving residents with disabilities a fair chance to access and participate in leisure and tourism activities will help nurture a more positive feeling towards tourism development amongst this group of people and extend it to their family members and friends. Using in-depth interviews with 32 people with disabilities in Macao, this study explores their experiences in accessing the city’s IR amenities and whether the degree of accessibility has any effects on their level of support for the gaming industry. Results indicate that people with disabilities have encountered physical, human, and economic difficulties before, during, and after their visit to an IR. Although their level of acceptance of the gaming industry remains high due to the economic benefits received from the sector, sustainable business growth requires equal opportunities and accessibility for all. Policy implications for IR operators and destination markets are discussed.     

‘Race’, sport and leisure: lessons from critical race theory

This paper presents and explores critical race theory (CRT) as an ontological starting point for the study of sport and leisure. CRT is based on five precepts outlined by Solorzano and Yosso that centre ‘race’ and racism, social justice, plurivocality, transdisciplinarity and challenge orthodoxies. There have been a number of recent criticisms and debates amongst leisure and sports studies writers that challenge their general focus of study as narrow and myopic. The five precepts have been fundamental to radical shifts in critical legal studies over the past fifteen years and have significance for the development of critical sport and leisure theory. CRT and ‘race’ critical perspectives are drawn out, clarified and their mutual agendas focussed. It is argued here that researchers and writers need urgently to centralize ‘race’ and racism as core factors in the study of social relations in sport if Birrell's optimism in the development of sport (and leisure) theory is to be realised.     

Knowing your place and commanding space: de/constructions of gendered embodiment in mixed-sex karate

ABSTRACT

Feminists have long acknowledged that gendered divisions in access to spaces of leisure, and how women and men physically take up that space, reproduce gender inequality. This article will explore how karate practitioners participate in the space of mixed-sex karate practice and how such uses of space de/construct gendered embodiments and a gender hierarchy. Data presented are drawn from nine months of ethnographic emersion within three karate clubs and 15 photo-elicitation interviews with karate participants from the three clubs. The findings of this paper suggest that whilst women often occupied spaces of expertise within the karate hall, gendered distinctions in uses of space emerged in the more subtle ways in which women and men used their voice, responded to the tacit and smelt dilemmas of sweat, and moved their bodies across physical space. This research highlights both the potential of physical leisure practice to ‘undo’ conventional gendered embodiments that particularly restrict women’s intentionality in the world, and the power of spatially attuned research to illuminate the minute ways in which unequal gender relations are naturalised, legitimised and done.     

Isn’t it good,Norwegian wood? Lifestyle and adventure sports participation among Norwegian youth

This paper explores Norwegian youngsters’ (and, to a lesser extent, adults’) engagement with conventional and lifestyle sports via an examination of recent trends. In the process, it explores the significance or otherwise of ‘nature-based settings’ and the developing character of lifestyle sports. In terms of changes in youth sport, young Norwegians are the quintessential sporting omnivores. However, the particular mix of conventional and lifestyle sports that Norwegian youngsters favour has shifted within a generation, with the latter more prominent in 2007 than they had been even a decade earlier. The changes appear emblematic of a shift among Norwegian youth towards sports activities that offer alternative forms and styles of participation to those traditionally associated with ‘the outdoors’ as a style of life. In theoretical terms, the findings suggest that, as a generic and popular collective noun, the term lifestyle sport is most useful when it draws attention to the ‘commonalities’ shared by many of the activities often corralled under it.