ABSTRACT
Interest in the life course has been growing and the value of life-course analyses is increasingly recognized. A life-course approach suggests that cumulative experiences accreting over a lifetime have profound effects on leisure. To the extent voluntary activity is considered a dimension of leisure involvement, there is all the more reason for closer scrutiny. Leisure deserves greater attention if only because it represents an option compatible with what R. L. Coser described as the "plurality of life worlds" that has myriad ameliorative effects during adulthood. As with much research on aging, gerontological research on leisure has generally been descriptive and cross-sectional. Leisure is also a kind of consumerism capable of bridging the separation between person-object and actor-context, acting as a kind of loom for the "intricate interweaving of biological, sociocultural and psychological processes" that is life-course development.
