ABSTRACT
The social and cultural bases of serious leisure, as an idea, can be examined from two angles: the speaker's position as its first and principal architect and the positions of the people who pursue it. The lack of a social science definition of amateurs meant that no one had actually conceived of them in the light in which they are examined here: as people occupying a unique, marginal position, or role, within contemporary North American society. Indeed the fifteen-year project began with several imported ideas, among them career, commitment, identity, and volunteer/volunteering. This chapter shows how and where, over the course of the history of the Perspective, still other imported ideas have been brought in and what they have added to it by dint of their presence. One of the more recent imports has been introduced in the book, namely, that of social world. Another imported concept is that of lifestyle.
