ABSTRACT
This chapter develops the focus from the social relations between co-present but mostly unknown others in public and semi-public spaces in urban environments to a focus on the social relations within the bounded and interactive spaces of social leisure organisations. The emphasis on how social interactions within the organisations were emotionally experienced highlights the extent to which, as with community, conviviality is an affective as well as a corporeal encounter between different others. That affect was translated into atmosphere reflects the collective and participatory nature of the social interactions in the leisure group settings. The activities that are the basis of social leisure organisations were formative in the social interactions within the groups. The role of participation in creating mutual engagement is well-established in work on communities of practice. The social leisure organisations were sites where people went to interact with others, if only to 'do stuff '. There was flexibility in the extent or intensity of participation.
