| Abstract: | One of the seminal works in the development of British cultural studies was Richard Hoggart's The Uses of Literacy , in which he presents a vision of working class communities in the 40 years since the First World War. To do this he drew particularly on his experiences of Hunslet in South Leeds. In this paper we revisit South Leeds 40 years on to examine continuities and changes in the community as evidenced through people's leisure and compare this with Hoggart's analysis. To do this we have drawn on census and other official statistics and our own observation and interviews in the field. In order to interpret today's communities in South Leeds we make use of theoretical developments in the interim. We suggest that in what Bauman (1997) refers to as ‘two nations society mark two’ people try to reinvent community and it is through leisure in particular that this is evidenced. We therefore conclude that any attempt to understand ‘community’ at the millennium must place leisure centre stage. |
