ABSTRACT
The material to be reviewed in this chapter is held together rather tenuously by particular combinations of largely academic determinants. In the 1970s and 1980s, a number of studies began to cohere into a new field or specialism, ‘leisure studies’, ‘tourism’ or even ‘recreation studies’. Some newer pieces were written by CCCS alumni or cultural studies fellow travellers, and, in accordance with what must now look like a familiar pattern, they had to insert themselves into spaces contested by rivals. CCCS members struggled with the Sociology and English Faculties at Birmingham University, as we have seen. Gramscian media studies flourished initially as one strand of an Open University course launched jointly between Social Sciences and Education, Mass Communication and Society (DE353) (Open University 1977). Gramscian leisure studies began in sections of the OU course popular culture U203) (Open University 1982). U203 arose from some adroit manoeuvring by Bennett too (Bennett 1980a), and a fuller discussion can be found in Chapter 10. Later still, after U203, gramscian work faced a new struggle to win a place in ‘leisure studies’, finding itself having to ‘break’ anew with sociology, history, recreation management and market research, as Clarke’s and Critcher’s (1985) well-known book reveals. Tomlinson (1989) gives a similar account.
