ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the positive, as it should in a disquisition on positive sociology. It considers the potential that especially serious and project-based leisure have for generating social capital through community involvement. The chapter discusses the tendency toward selfishness, drawing on Charles Taylor's position on this attitude and its relationship to the authentic self. Selfishness is related to certain the values and moral standards germane to community involvement. The chapter deals with a section on care and community involvement. The interrelationship of voluntary action, voluntary altruism, and leisure are well illustrated in the activities of the mentor. A broader sort of community involvement comes from pursuing volunteer activities, which may be enacted as serious, casual, or project-based leisure. In leisure, as in most other areas of life, many activities are structured, or organized, in small groups, social networks, and grassroots organizations as well as in larger complex organizations and still more broadly, in tribes, social worlds, and social movements.
