ABSTRACT
In recent years leisure has emerged as a respectable historical discipline, and scholarly studies have appeared on a wide range of themes from sport to seaside holidays and cinema. It is important to stress at the outset that these studies have been informed by the need to situate leisure within the determining economic, social, and political context. Leisure is after all a ‘determined’ form of conduct for it is inextricably linked to the economic and social totality, and the various categories which make up that totality-population, work, the ownership of property, the structure of power, and the ideological formation. In other words, it is necessary to consider leisure in relation to the various other sections which appear in this Atlas.
