ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the relationship of the serious leisure perspective to health and well-being. Leisure studies, in general, is weak outside the West and a few of the former Communist-bloc countries. The serious leisure perspective stands apart from the aforementioned theoretic and purposive types in its substantial rootedness in the routine life of homo otiosus. Most people in society do not go about their routine leisure thinking of it as mass, elite, alienated, anomic, sedentary, or even playful. Typologies simplify and organize an undifferentiated mass of phenomena found to have one or more features in common, in the case of leisure, the Perspective has simplified and organized an undifferentiated mass of free-time core activities and experiences. Patterson has continued to extend serious leisure into the field of disabilities studies and practice. For instance he has recommended that community-based agencies serving people with disabilities implement leisure counselling and educational services as well as hire trained leisure counsellors to support their clients.