ABSTRACT
The Leisure Studies Association (LSA) was established in 1975 to provide a forum for discussion and debate on the ‘penalties and prizes’ resulting from quantitative and qualitative changes in work and leisure. From the outset the LSA was avowedly multi-disciplinary, seeking to bring together academics, researchers, and practitioners to discuss issues of theory, politics, planning, and management. The main methods used to pursue such ends were a series of regional seminars and annual conferences. Changes in the institutions of work, family, and education are not only reflected in leisure but many of the authors suggest that the institutions of leisure represent the site of potential solutions to a variety of social and economic problems resulting from such changes. The constant tension or conflict between the potential and reality of leisure, indicate that the definitional disputes concerning ‘the meaning of leisure’ are not mere semantics but are of substantive political and ideological importance.
