ABSTRACT
This landmark publication brings together some of the most perceptive commentators of the present moment to explore core ideas and cutting edge developments in the field of Leisure Studies. It offers important new insights into the dynamics of the transformation of leisure in contemporary societies, tracing the emergent issues at stake in the discipline and examining Leisure Studies’ fundamental connections with cognate disciplines such as Sociology, Cultural Studies, History, Sport Studies and Tourism.
This book contains original work from key scholars across the globe, including those working outside the Leisure Studies mainstream. It showcases the state of the art of contemporary Leisure Studies, covering key topics and key thinkers from the psychology of leisure to leisure policy, from Bourdieu to Baudrillard, and suggests that leisure in the 21st century should be understood as centring on a new ‘Big Seven’ (holidays, drink, drugs, sex, gambling, TV and shopping). No other book has gone as far in redefining the identity of the discipline of Leisure Studies, or in suggesting how the substantive ideas of Leisure Studies need to be rethought. The Routledge Handbook of Leisure Studies should therefore be the intellectual guide of first choice for all scholars, academics, researchers and students working in this subject area.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|94 pages
Key Disciplines
chapter 8|15 pages
Research Positions, Postures and Practices in Leisure Studies
part II|93 pages
Key Thinkers
chapter 16|11 pages
What they did on their Holidays
part III|102 pages
Leisure as a Socio-Cultural Phenomenon
part IV|80 pages
The Big Seven Leisure Pursuits
chapter 27|9 pages
From the Back Street to the High Street
part V|107 pages
Uses of Leisure
part VI|116 pages
New Directions