ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the relationship between Weberian interpretative approaches and leisure interaction. In a social ecology characterized by considerable fragmentation and dispersion, leisure becomes a necessary social space for the location, development and enrichment of primary relationships. Interpretive sociology takes a starting-point different from both the systemic and conflict perspectives. The examination of social interaction starts with the social actor who is interpreting his social situation and taking action within it. Even with the stress on anticipatory socialization into adult roles rather than in current roles through the life course, leisure interactions have been considered important to children and youth. Leisure may be studied processually to understand the nature of that problematic part of the social dialectic that is most open to ongoing construction and reconstruction. The social limits on freedom in leisure become essential to beginning to understand more of the existential elements.
