The modern world is one that holds an intense fascination with the activities we place under the heading ‘leisure’. Rather than simply being the opposite of ‘work’, ‘leisure’ today can be seen as a form of social and cultural life in which ‘work’ and ‘leisure’ intersect and mutually inform one another.
This series is a forum for agenda-setting research that examines our contemporary world of leisure. It places a strong emphasis not only on mapping current developments in individual and collective leisure activities, but also on challenging our understanding of these from different perspectives. Providing detailed empirical and theoretical accounts, this series explores the critical issues that underpin people’s leisure lives at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
While this series is devoted to leisure, many of its books touch on other subject fields, contributing to interdisciplinary studies and appealing to readers from across the social sciences and the humanities.
By Gökben Demirbaş
September 13, 2024
This book interrogates the role of gender and class in shaping women’s everyday leisure practices. Drawing on empirical research in urban Turkey, the book explores how leisure is perceived and practised by women within their communities. The book examines the relationship of women’s leisure to ...
Edited
By Stefan Lawrence
May 27, 2024
This book examines the phenomenon of ‘digital guru media’ (DGM), the self-styled online influencers, life coaches, experts and entrepreneurs who post on the themes of wellness, health and fitness. It opens up new perspectives on digital leisure and internet celebrity culture, and asks important ...
By Alan O'Connor
April 23, 2024
This book explores the sociology of sailing and yachting. Drawing on original research, and employing a theoretical framework based on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, the book argues that sailing is, still, an upper-middle-class activity that has much to tell us about the wider sociology of leisure ...
Edited
By Huimei Liu
March 04, 2024
This is the first book to explore the meaning and significance of leisure in Chinese society, as well as the relationship between leisure and work that reveals so much about a society’s cultural values. Exploring philosophical and theoretical concepts from a Chinese perspective, the book also ...
By Kevin Bingham
June 07, 2023
This book explores the enigmatic world of the natural underground, viewing it as a site of leisure and a primary sphere of anthropotechnics. It reshapes the old language of caving into new ideas that broaden the possibilities of the sociology of caving. After outlining a novel methodological ...
Edited
By Briony Sharp, Rebecca Finkel, Katherine Dashper
December 22, 2022
This is the first book to critically explore international leisure during the COVID-19 pandemic. It analyses the ways in which the pandemic has impacted upon our leisure practices and our leisure lives, focusing on three key spaces ・ public, private, and digital. The book seeks to understand how ...
Edited
By Troy D. Glover, Erin K. Sharpe
April 29, 2022
This book analyses the concept of community by critically exploring its many manifestations in leisure. It unpacks patterns of mutuality, collective expression, and belonging as they emerge through interaction, shared narrative, and practice. Recognizing that our experiences of “being in ...
By Jiri Zuzanek
April 29, 2022
The significance of work and leisure as elements of our social fabric have puzzled philosophers and social scientists for generations. This ambitious new study considers historical views of work and leisure alongside contemporary survey evidence about time-use and well-being. Combining ...
By A.J. Veal
June 30, 2020
The idea of a ‘leisure society’ was in its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s, when it was predicted that the pattern of falling working hours which had been experienced in Western societies in the first half of the twentieth century would continue indefinitely. The leisure society has clearly not been ...
Edited
By Diana Parry
February 25, 2020
Feminisms in Leisure Studies acknowledges and advances the contribution of feminist theories to leisure knowledge and research. Building upon the strong history of feminist leisure scholarship, the book reviews key feminist theories and offers an overview of a fourth wave of feminism and its ...
By Johan Bouwer, Marco van Leeuwen
September 10, 2018
What is leisure? How does leisure relate to leading a good life? This critical and intelligent study interrogates the basic principles of leisure and demonstrates the continuing relevance of these questions for our society today. It not only explores the traditional philosophical concepts at the ...
By Tony Blackshaw
February 13, 2018
In this provocative new book, Tony Blackshaw argues that Leisure Studies is in a quiet but deep state of crisis. The twenty-first century has brought profound change to all aspects of society, including a plurality of new leisure worlds, and traditional concepts of Leisure Studies fail to capture ...