The Influence of Confucianism on Women’s Leisure in Taiwan

Abstract

Confucian philosophy has traditionally had a considerable influence on many aspects of the lives of the Taiwanese people. It is therefore necessary to take this belief structure into account in order to explain Taiwanese women’s leisure perceptions and behaviours. The purpose of this study is to examine this issue. The factors that constrain women’s leisure in Taiwan are identified. These categories can be broadly termed economic, domestic, social, and cultural constraints     

Creating Distance from Body Issues: Exploring New Materialist Feminist Possibilities for Renegotiating Gendered Embodiment

Abstract

The body’s active role in the production of gendered embodiments is a key focus for feminist cultural studies and leisure studies. The article draws on new materialist feminist scholarship to explore how gender relations are produced and negotiated in physical culture through one case study example taken from a wider study of young people’s experiences of the body and self-image over time. The article explores how gendered embodiment is assembled through the socio-material circumstances of everyday life. For one particiapnt, 'Ann', “creating distance” from appearance concerns was an embodied process which involved new practices and encounters (e.g., walking for leisure, reading feminist literature) and relationships and engagements with others (e.g., a partner, friends, family). The potential for feminism to open possibilities to imagine the body otherwise is also discussed in relation to recent efforts to foster social justice imperatives in leisure sciences and feminist physical cultural studies.     

What is Leisure Without Becoming? Assemblages of Active and Reactive Leisure

Abstract

In answering the question, “what is leisure without becoming?” this article revisits philosophical insights in Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza and Nietzsche. I investigate the relevance of these thinkers to Deleuze and Guattari’s collaboration to propose an understanding of leisure as not only becoming but also as negation of difference and possible repetition of the same in reactive leisure. Leisure as becoming is a vital realization of what a body can do that cannot entirely be conceived as a state of Being, a period of time, or necessarily an activity. Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of assemblage is used to understand becoming as a line of flight, a relational deterritorialization, that extends the capacities of a body.     

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.     

Music in the time-spectrum: routines,spaces and emotional experience

ABSTRACT

Music streaming, structured by an expanding network of social interdependencies (e.g. musicians, sound engineers, computer scientists and distributors) has made it easier to consume music in a wider number of social and private spaces and to a greater degree. This paper examines the emotional experience of contemporary music consumption by drawing from an Eliasian perspective, specifically Elias and Dunning’s sociology of leisure. We explore the relationship between work, spare time and leisure spaces, rather than examining specific spaces in isolation. We argue that music is used to demarcate, transition between, and blur space. Music plays an important role in facilitating the rhythm of routine, helping individuals to adjust to the demands of different spaces (based on varying intensities and immediacies of social pressures) and manage mood. The key characteristics of leisure that Elias and Dunning identify (motility, sociability and mimetic tension) are explored across the spectrum of time and space.     

Feeling the Noise: Teenagers,Bedrooms and Music

Abstract

This investigation examines the psychometric properties of a modified involvement scale (MIS) using recreationists sampled at a national forest in upstate South Carolina and consumers enquiring about angling opportunities in the Low Country of South Carolina. Following the testing of several model configurations, support for a conceptualization of enduring involvement was observed consisting of five correlated facets: attraction, centrality, social bonding, identity expression and identity affirmation. This conceptualization was an extension of McIntyre’s measure. Notable departures from McIntyre’s conceptualization include the extraction of a social component previously embedded in the centrality facet and greater distinction in the leisure identification processes. This led to the construction of two identification facets. Testing using multiple criteria of validity and reliability illustrated that the MIS was a sound indicator of enduring leisure involvement.     

Domesticating Gambling: Gender,Caring and the UK National Lottery

Abstract

The issue of gambling as a form of leisure practice has, to date, received very little attention from sociologists. This is despite the enormous range of consideration recently invested in gambling by policy makers, politicians, journalists, psychologists and economists. In particular, the role that gambling plays as an important part of women’s leisure patterns has been virtually ignored. In this paper, the impact of UK National Lottery play on women’s everyday leisure experiences is examined. A questionnaire was administered to a diverse group of 150 women, and 15 women from this sample volunteered to take part in in‐depth interviews. The questionnaires sought to produce a database of the frequency of lottery play, the types of games played and the amounts of money gambled. The interviews focused on individual experiences, meanings and perceptions of lottery play as a form of leisure. The quantitative and qualitative findings of the research are discussed in terms of the material and ideological constraints shaping women’s everyday experiences of leisure, and also in terms of the ways in which gender and ‘caring’ are reproduced through women’s National Lottery play. It examines the ways in which the lottery addresses a lack of time and space for women’s pursuit of leisure.     

Prague’s community gardening in liquid times: challenges in the creation of spaces for social connection

ABSTRACT

Building on the concept of liquid leisure, this paper examines the current potential of community gardening in Prague to create collaborative place-bound communities. By looking closely at the fluctuation of members of selected gardens and the reasons for withdrawal from this activity, we try to see if changes in the member base have any consequences for the functioning of the gardens and the social groups created around them. The results are based on an analysis of interviews held with representatives of community gardens in Prague. Our results document that community projects such as community gardens can be sustained as gardeners come and go and can still fulfil important social, educational and environmental needs of gardens’ immediate neighbourhoods. Moreover, the perception of community around the garden is negotiated and re-negotiated by individual gardeners. The community can play a different role throughout different stages of people’s lives and other changing contexts. Experiences of nuclear families, tribal groupings, collaborative and interest communities often intersect in the space of community gardens. Gardening as a leisure activity, as well as community creation and belonging can, thus, be approached from very different perspectives in the context of liquid modernity.     

Locating leisure as the route to well-being: challenges of researching women’s leisure in Turkey

ABSTRACT

This article interrogates the relation of leisure to subjective well-being by focusing on the language-based challenges during empirical research, which deeply impact upon both the substance of the data collected and its interpretation, thereby the knowledge that is produced on leisure. Drawing upon the empirical data collected via qualitative methods, the article seizes on the relationship between women’s free-time, labour, leisure and subjective well-being. The findings of the research suggest that the translation of leisure as ‘free time activities’ in Turkish creates serious challenges in researching women’s leisure. Women in this research understand leisure in multiple ways, such as an escape from boredom, a sphere of recuperation, pleasure and self-fulfilment which altogether represent their understanding of leisure as a route to their subjective well-being. Building on these findings, the article aims to highlight the importance of ethnographically guided qualitative research in uncovering both the meanings of and the interdependence between leisure and subjective well-being in both Turkey, the focus of the study, and other comparable societies around the world.     

Older women’s identity reconstruction in leisure spaces: a case of Guangzhou,China

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes the social interactions and social relations generated by older women in the urban public leisure spaces of Guangzhou, China. The intent is to explore the identity of older women in daily leisure spaces. Data were collected through in-depth interviews and non-participatory observation and then were analysed to explore the relation among identification, leisure spaces, and interaction. The study shows the older women’s need for self-fulfilment and social interaction, as well as the need to fill emptiness are generally unfulfilled because of the alienation of urban life – the citizens share a common sense of loneliness and senselessness. Nevertheless, the inclusiveness, openness, and group honour of urban public spaces offers a good complement to the sense of isolation. In the specific socio-cultural background of Guangzhou, older women reshape or strengthen their identities through multiple factors to achieve a strong sense of belonging in daily leisure spaces.     

Examining the Use of Leisure for the Sociopolitical Development of Black Youth in Out-of-School Time Programs

Abstract

The current social and political climate in the U.S. requires a reexaminationof how marginalized groups shape their leisure around political identity development and resistance. This paper will first provide a brief introduction to the concept of sociopolitical development (SPD) and its role in culture specific out-of-school time programs that serve Black youth. Next, using a multiple case study approach, the authors examined how leisure informs the SPD of Black youth. Results identify SPD as a critical component of these recreational program’s theoretical approaches, leadership structure, staff selection and training, and curriculum design. Study results inform the ways recreational agencies can serve as sites for SPD and activism for marginalized groups like Black youth.     

Leisure,international retirement migration,and retirement adjustment: insights from the best exotic marigold hotel movies

ABSTRACT

International retirement migration (IRM) is a growing phenomenon linked to increased longevity, early retirement, and improved financial status. Encompassing both travel and leisure experiences, IRM is a topic relevant to both tourism and leisure studies. By analysing the fictional movie series The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012) and The Second Best Marigold Hotel (2015) from psychological, gerontological, and sociological theoretical perspectives, this paper examines motivation, goal setting, continuity and change, and identity development in IRM experiences within tourism and leisure contexts. This paper (a) identified motivations for IRM as finance, romantic relationships, social relations, self-esteem, self-fulfilment, and social norms; (b) in turn, time perception and attitude influence IRM emigrants’ priority and emotional fulfilment; (c) innovation extricates IRM emigrants from role loss and facilitates role change; and (d) IRM emigrants experience various identity development processes. A conceptual framework for IRM is proposed that purports to explain the IRM experience process and indicates that such an understanding of IRM should incorporate psychological, gerontological, and sociological perspectives.     

If it weren‘t for my hobby,I'd have a life: dog sports,serious leisure,and boundary negotiations

In the social sciences, work, family and religion - but not leisure - are commonly thought to shape the meanings people give their lives. But increasingly leisure research reports that under modernism, leisure practice and cultural consumption are at least as essential. What happens when leisure and ‘real world’ institutions pose different, even conflicting expectations? We focus on ‘serious leisure’ as elaborated through Tomlinson's ‘culture of commitment’. Our case study is people who participate in serious leisure involving dogs. The data comes from 61 interviews plus field notes based on our own involvement in dog sports. We ask how as an alternative world often perceived by self and others as marginal, this passionate avocation interfaces with the ‘real world’ of work, family, religion, and other social institutions. We find that dog sports indeed represent a ‘culture of commitment’. For hobbyists, involvement shapes such life realms as how time is used, how money is spent, how kin are defined, and how profit is viewed. Sometimes it generates strong behavioural expectations for participants, expectations that clash with those of the ‘real world’. Examples include gender identity and religious and work obligations. When these clashes occur, respondents neither simply succumb to nor resist either set of demands. Rather, they negotiate between the two, reproducing and reshaping each simultaneously. Meanwhile, they also deal with the intrinsic tensions that a serious leisure pursuit brings.     

Making an Album: Rap Performance and a ‘CD Track Listing’ as Performance Writing in The Beat of Boyle Street Music Programme

Abstract

This paper uses performance as a means of conceptualizing and writing leisure research. This research reports on a three‐year arts‐based ethnographic study of a music‐making programme conducted with Aboriginal young people in Edmonton, Canada, and explores young people's rap music performances. I especially make note of how the research narrative may be represented as a kind of performance text – in this case, as a CD track listing. I contend that this type of representational performance writing offers an accessible and compelling way of retelling the stories of the people involved in the research. Performance writing additionally calls attention to issues of what leisure researchers choose to include in written representations of our studies, how we listen, and how we respond to the performances voiced through research practices.     

Book reviews

Abstract

This article examines the cultural field of fitness as a network of producers, consumers, products and practices that has developed around the care of the body through physical exercise. Drawing on a thematic text analysis of US exercise manuals, the paper focuses on how the commercial fitness field naturalizes associations between physical exercise and leisure, and between leisure and self‐work. In particular, the analysis examines three themes and their relevance to our broader understanding of leisure in contemporary consumer society: the management of leisure time; the use of leisure for self‐investment strategies; and the promotion of consumption as the framework for leisure and an accompanying notion of pleasure. The fitness field casts light on how leisure more generally is constructed as a sphere of obligations to make productive use of one’s time, to improve one’s body and self, and to do so through the wares of the consumer marketplace. The cultural imaginary of leisure as a time of freedom from work and responsibility is thus recast, in an age of individualization, as a time of freedom to accomplish the work of self‐production.     

Understanding Urban Public Space in a Leisure Context

For many people, the city is a landscape of everyday life. In cities, public spaces serve as venues for social interaction, sociability, conviviality, and the enactment of community. Despite their relevance to community life, however, urban spaces remain underexamined in the leisure literature. If researchers seek to understand leisure in the context of everyday experiences, they must also consider the spatial perspective in which leisure activities are pursued. In this research reflection, we argue that urban public spaces and some private spaces are fundamentally leisure settings that warrant greater research attention. We propose to broaden the conceptual understanding of what constitutes urban public space by outlining four categories of urban space based on ownership and accessibility.     

Social differences in leisure behavior: Measurement and interpretation

This article examines how three major dimensions of leisure behavior, i.e., rates of leisure participation, money expenditure for leisure goods and services and discretionary time available for leisure pursuits, are distributed across various socio‐demographic and socio‐occupational groups. The money expenditures for leisure, it is argued, follow traditional class lines most closely; the rates of leisure participation are characterized by a more egalitarian distribution; and the amounts of leisure time are often inversely related to social centrality and social status. The article interprets these varying patterns of leisure inequalities as a function of the cumulative nature of leisure participation as opposed to the “finite” nature of leisure time, and as a reflection of the complex relationship between leisure, work, income, leisure class, and leisure status.     

The redefining of later life through leisure: music and dance groups in Brazil

ABSTRACT

The present study aimed at understanding the meanings that older adults attribute to two group leisure activities: dance classes and music get-togethers. The research question was: What are the meanings that older adults construct through group leisure activities? The study used ethnographic methods, specifically participant observation and in-depth one on one interviews. Two groups were selected in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In total, 32 in-depth interviews were conducted, 16 in each group. Data analysis included the development of categories, and entailed constant comparison between the two cases, which were then interpreted in terms of Consumer Culture Theory due to its relevance to leisure in contemporary societies. Six categories of meanings were identified in each group. Of these, five were common to both groups (well-being, hedonism, social connectedness, identity construction, and learning) and one category in each group was activity-specific: rediscovery of the body (dance) and nostalgia (music). The results of the study show how ageing becomes an asset to the individual rather than a liability, leading to a redefinition of what later life can be. In particular, we provide a novel perspective on leisure in later life by focusing on Brazil – an emerging country with a relational culture and high social inequality.     

“You start by changing the whole cultural context”: aikido v. gender violence

ABSTRACT

Aikido is a martial art that focuses on non-violent approaches to conflict. The current article discusses ways that experienced practitioners of aikido adjust the social environments in which they practice this leisure pastime in order to pre-emptively address gender violence. Their approaches compliment the tactics of bystander intervention and community accountability strategies. This study is based on data obtained through naturalistic observations, participant observations, and interviews (n = 15) with people who had been studying aikido for an average of 12.4 years. Interventions were conducted at the levels of policy, leadership, curriculum, and game structure. The collection of modifications to aikido practitioners’ social environments includes resistance to binary opposition between two sexes, social hierarchies, violence against the self, homophobic talk, and suppression of empathy.