ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a triangle of relationships. The relationships between the disciplines and fields are never stable. They can stimulate and help to develop each other. Sport, media, tourism, heritage and the arts are simultaneously sub-fields within leisure studies, but can also be independent fields of study, drawing from leisure studies and all the basic disciplines which include sociology. Leisure studies departments and programmes were first created in the USA in the 1950s and 1960s, and spread quickly into Canada. Sport sociology may be located within a multi-disciplinary department of sport or leisure, or within a sociology department. Leisure studies compares different uses of leisure in terms of the time and money that they account for, the proportions of the population that participate, and the benefits that they derive. Every sociology of sport course will teach that participation is related to social class, age and gender.
