ABSTRACT
While leisure, race, and national populism have been minimally linked and theorized in the literature, we take this moment, during the global turn to national populism and conservative regimes, to center leisure and race in the politics of today. While theorizing the link to leisure and national populism, we center how the turn towards ethno-nationalist populism derives from the workings of race, alongside class, caste, and ethnicity, in various global north and global south leisure contexts. We provide an introduction that puts in conversation the realms of leisure (in all its possibilities), race, and the various modes of national populism. Therefore, we provide both the important theoretical foundations to understanding these relationships while offering numerous instances of such shifts to national populism. In particular, we start the conversation with a case of the realm of art, sport, and protest as a way to pull out the extraordinary links to social phenomenon, power, and theory.
