Leisure studies,leisure policy and social citizenship: a response to Rosemary Deem

An under-researched, controversial and complex leisure event is examined in the light of orthodox research that documents the beneficial effects leisure has on the psyche. This involves drawing on contemporary theorizing in leisure studies while at the same time using grounded knowledge of a particular locality and synthesizing the material to identify areas for future theorizing and research. In Northern Ireland, the July summer holiday period was traditionally used to celebrate Protestant culture and religion and Unionist supporters marked these events by holding religious and political rallies. However, this celebration of Protestantism has not (recently) been shared with the Nationalist community and various skirmishes and civil disorder offences have been recorded over this holiday period during the last 5 years. The paper notes the change in emphasis from celebration to confrontation and considers the effects this has on individuals already living in an armed conflict situation. It is contended that during this particular holiday period in the Province, leisure is used as a vehicle for social mobilization as Unionists and Nationalists pursue group interests and engage in collective action for their respective ideologies. Leisure, in Northern Ireland, does not function in a manner that orthodox research would initially suggest but is used to reinforce political and sectarian divisions. The paper concludes by commenting that the political, social and economic indices that shape our experiences of leisure need to be considered and/or incorporated into theoretical understandings of leisure.     

Leisure,tourism and social change

The need to recognize the overlap between leisure, tourism and social change was emphasized at the conference of the Commission on the Geography of Tourism and Leisure, held in January in Edinburgh. Sponsored by the Scottish Tourist Board, several regional councils and commercial firms and held under the aegis of the International Geographical Union, the conference attracted 75 delegates world-wide and has produced a wealth of information on subjects as varied as leisure lifestyles, tourism planning, social change, community development and environmental impact. J.T. Coppock of the University of Edinburgh reports.     

Leisure,work, and family: How IronMEN balance the demands of three resource-intensive roles

Building on the work of Hambrick, Simmons, and Mahoney (2013 Hambrick, M. E., Simmons, J. M., &; Mahoney, T. Q. (2013). An inquiry into the perceptions of leisure-work-family conflict among female Ironman participants. International Journal of Sport Management and Marketing, 13, 173–199. [Google Scholar]), the purpose of this study was to examine perceptions of leisure-work-family conflict among male Ironman participants, as well as the strategies and support mechanisms used to help manage their various role demands. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 males who successfully completed at least one Ironman event. For these males, perceptions of inter-role conflict were minimal, despite the presence of similar demands reported in the Hambrick et al. study. Participants still emphasized the need for family and work role support, as well as specific role management strategies, namely scheduling, sacrifice, and role prioritization, to make their Ironman aspirations a reality. The impact of gender roles on perceptions of leisure-work-family conflict is also discussed.     

Engendered ideologies and leisure policy in the UK. Part 1: gender ideologies

I don't quite yawn when I see another project about the problems women face but I think to myself ‘This ground has been heavily walked over. We know it. It's been written about. It's been sung about. It's been acted about and it's been painted and performed about.’ It is very well worn territory and I'm now thinking ‘What next? How do you use that raised awareness and move on?’ (Keeper, arts and museums). This article draws upon PhD research to examine the restructuring of engendered leisure policy ideologies in the UK in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and to consider the implications for leisure provision for women. The article is in two parts. In Part 1, a typology of ideologies is developed in order to outline the kinds of gender ideologies circulating in leisure policy. Part 2 of the article examines the articulation of gender and professional ideologies, and the configurations of ideologies which were emerging as predominant at a time of political and economic restructuring.     

Leisure pursuits: uncovering the ‘selective tradition’ in culture and well-being evidence for policy

ABSTRACT

This article reconsiders the value of leisure studies to well-being evidence for policy-making. It presents secondary analyses of Office for National Statistics data from the Measuring National Well-being (MNW) debate (2010). It finds that leisure is more important to the nation than accounted for in official reports. Using Raymond Williams’ framework of ‘lived culture’ and ‘recorded culture’, the article interprets this analytical discrepancy as demonstrating the culture of ‘selective tradition’.

Raymond Williams’ work is used to understand the sidelining of leisure in the MNW programme in two ways. Firstly, the article addresses survey design and analysis. It finds a methodological bias against free text data as evidence, affecting which aspects of cultural and social life appear central to well-being. Secondly, the article takes a discourse approach to cultural sector advocacy, which, in arguing the value of arts-related activity, relegates aspects of ‘culture as ordinary’ by default. These two selective traditions mean that ‘everyday participation’ is not valued in discussions of well-being evidence, advocacy or in the final MNW measures, despite its value to the public. This article prioritises everyday understandings of well-being over those of experts, offering an ethical and practical contribution to leisure studies and policy-making for well-being.     

The Temporal Phases of Leisure Experience: Expectation,Experience and Reflection of Leisure Participation

While there have been studies whereby the methodology relied on evaluations of pre-, during, and postparticipation experiences, it is far more common that research on leisure does not consider the temporal phases of a leisure experience. Further, many of the studies that have attempted to encompass the multiple temporal phases of experiential leisure involvement have not focused on participants who had established significant leisure careers or long histories of recreation participation in a singular activity. The purpose of this study was to explore the temporal phases of a leisure experience in the context of individuals' in situ attendance at a niche music performance. These phases consisted of participants' expectations before the event, the actual experience during the event, and the memory of that experience after its completion. Because participants wanted to feel in control of their lives, personal reassessments and the prioritization of positive events sought to emphasize the value of their agency. Researchers found that the reconstruction of memory drives desire for future participation as well as the associative expectations of what is to come.     

Leisure,culture and action research: the case of Sweden

Although there is reluctance in Sweden to recognize class divisions, there are in reality different cultures: those of the peasants, the upper or middle class, and the working class. Reasoning in the upper/middle class takes two forms: there are those who accept the culture barrier as inevitable and those who think the gap between ‘fine’ culture and working-class culture can be bridged. These types of reasoning are paralleled in the working class, there being believers in class solidarity and ‘climbers’. One reason for failing to bridge the cultural gap and alter the pattern of leisure life is the existence of an authorized national culture and leisure.     

休闲产业:概念、范围与统计问题

建立我国休闲产业统计学已成为我们面临的一项重要课题.但由于对休闲产业的理解不同,目前国内学术界对休闲产业所应包括的行业范围尚未达成共识.本文在提出界定休闲产业三原则的基础上,结合国民经济三次产业划分法,将休闲产业划分为休闲第一产业、休闲第二产业和休闲第三产业.     

Dyadic Exploration of the Relationship of Leisure Satisfaction,Leisure Time,and Gender to Relationship Satisfaction

The stress suppressing model proposes that sufficient resources reduce stress. The stress exposure model suggests that certain factors expose individuals to more stress. The current study tested these two models by assessing the within-person lagging effect of leisure time on perceived severity of daily stressors. Analyzing eight-day diary data (N=2,022), we found that having more leisure time than usual on a day reduced perceived severity of daily stressors the next day and that the decrease in severity became larger with further increase in leisure time. Additionally, the effect is much stronger among busy individuals who usually had little leisure time. The findings demonstrated an accelerated suppressing effect that differed between-person, and the lagging effect affords stronger implication for causality than correlational analysis.     

Issues in measuring success in community-based Indigenous tourism: elites,kin groups,social capital,gender dynamics and income flows

Tourism development is a key feature of the neoliberal economic development model. Through a mix of state and private investment, Indigenous communities in Mexico are encouraged to transform local cultural and environmental resources into tourist consumption sites. The process results in a shift toward reliance on tourism, in place of farming, leaving households with few alternative earning strategies amidst fluctuating tourist arrivals and income, confounding the relationship between tourism and sustainability and questioning the utility of tourism as a sustainable tool for development. This article analyses a community-based Indigenous tourism project in a rural Maya village in Mexico's Yucatan, and discusses strategies employed at household level to navigate the arrival of tourism. Funding agencies assessed this project based on a triple bottom line metric that accounts for ecological health, financial sustainability, and its relationship to local social capital; however, these fail to account for differences between local and non-local conceptions of authenticity, indigeneity, and success. From a social perspective, the project has exacerbated existing tensions and has arguably widened the gap between the politically and economically powerful and less powerful, marginalized families in the community. Questions about policy, governance systems, and elite domination and kin group control are raised.     

Leisure,Stress, and Coping: An Evolving Area of Inquiry

Stress and coping are prevalent and ubiquitous in our everyday lives. The degree and manner in which we experience stress, and ways in which we cope with stress, strongly influence our daily choices and their outcomes, including those related to leisure. Research on leisure, stress, and coping is important within a broad spectrum of leisure research since it can be potentially integrated with leisure research on constraints and negotiations, lifespan development, diversity, and lifestyle. Such integration works to bridge the gap in the leisure research community that is often characterized as isolated entities. One important tangible benefit of such integration is that stress and coping have the potential to be a common language for many researchers with diverse interests, and it thus leads to opportunities for enhanced communication and understanding, as well as for possible collaborations. We hope that this special issue, presenting a diverse collection of papers focused on leisure, stress, and coping, may instill such ambitious, but important, desire. The role of this issue is threefold: (1) to better identify relationships among leisure, stress, and coping, (2) to introduce new theoretical and methodological approaches for such research, and (3) to encourage increased attention to and collaborations related to leisure, stress, and coping research.     

Momentarily Understanding the Contemporary Moment: Reflections on Koans,Politics, and Leisure

Abstract

A koan is a paradoxical riddle used to help practitioners of Zen Buddhism in their quest for non attachment. The idea of the koan can also be helpful as we attempt to make sense of the current social, historical and political moment. Do the events of 2018 reflect reality or reflect a temporal moment in reality? This essay ponders the meaning of attachment, letting go and taking action vis-à-vis the politics of leisure.     

Measuring the ABCs of Leisure Experience: Awareness,Boredom, Challenge,Distress

Abstract

The psychometric properties of four aspects of leisure experience (Awareness, Boredom, Challenge, Distress), originally identified and tested with adolescents, were investigated with college students. Findings indicated that the original subscales were internally consistent and could be applied, with minor modification, irrespective of gender, ethnicity, college major, or employment. Interrelationships among the four leisure constructs of Awareness, Boredom, Challenge, and Distress were found to vary as a function of both gender and ethnicity, yielding different profiles of African-American, Asian-American, European-American, and Hispanic-American male and female students.     

Culture,Self-Construal,and Leisure Motivations

The purpose of this study is to examine Canadian and Mainland Chinese students' leisure by investigating the role self-construal plays as an intervening variable between culture and motivation. Separate hierarchical multiple regressions are performed on each motivation with culture entered first followed by a block composed of four types of self-construal: vertical collectivism (i.e., dutiful), horizontal collectivism (i.e., cooperative), horizontal individualism (i.e., unique), and vertical individualism (i.e., achievement oriented). Results suggest that: (a) higher levels of horizontal collectivism are associated with higher levels of introjected reward (i.e., pride), identified (i.e., personally important), integrated (self-identity), and intrinsic (i.e., interesting and enjoyable) motivations; and (b) higher levels of horizontal individualism are associated with higher levels of introjected reward, identified, and integrated motivations.     

Leisure Constraints,Leisure Satisfaction,Life Satisfaction,and Self-Rated Health in Six Cities in Taiwan

Extensive research shows that individuals in lower socioeconomic statuses experience higher levels of morbidity and mortality than those of higher social status. This disparity remains even after lifestyle changes such as reduced smoking, improved diet, more exercise, and better access to medical care are afforded to those of lower status. According to Fundamental Social Cause Theory (FSCT), access to valued resources, including environmental, social, and psychological factors, mediates the relationship. The purpose of this study is to determine if leisure constraints, leisure satisfaction, and life satisfaction are among the variables that mediate the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and self-rated health in six cities in Taiwan. Results indicated that leisure related variables, including leisure constraints and leisure satisfaction, mediate the relationship between SES and self-rated health. The results suggest the value of FSCT as a framework for examining the relationship of leisure related variables to health.     

Leisure,Stress, and Coping: The Sport Participation of Collegiate Student-Athletes

Research has indicated that there is a relationship between stress and participation in leisure (Caltabiano, 1995; Chalip, Thomas, & Voyle, 1992; Reich & Zautra, 1981; Strauss-Blasche, Ekmekcioglu, & Marktl, 2002; Warner-Smith & Brown, 2002; Wheeler & Frank, 1988). It has been suggested that leisure buffers or mediates stress, thereby enhancing individual health and well-being, because of the self-determination and social support that are experienced in leisure (Coleman & Iso-Ahola, 1993). However, a number of issues have been raised by the recent research, including whether or not the leisure, stress, and health relationship varies by type of leisure activity (Iwasaki & Mannell, 2000), exactly why and how leisure (or any given leisure activity) interacts with stress (Iwasaki & Mannell, 1999-2000; Kleiber, Hutchinson, & Williams, 2002), and the possibility that leisure itself could be a stressor (Iwasaki & Mannell, 2000; Iwasaki & Smale, 1998). The interpretive study reported here examined a particular leisure activity--collegiate sport--and individuals' experiences of stress because of their participation in this type of leisure. Results indicate that collegiate sport is perceived to be both a buffer and experience of stress. Results also reveal that race and gender are important in shaping collegiate athletes' experiences of stress. Support was found for the ideas that (a) stress is a transactional process (Lazarus, 1998) and (b) research approaches that allow the dynamic experience and contextualization of the personal meanings of stress and leisure to emerge are needed (Iwasaki & Smale, 1998; Kleiber et al., 2002).