First published in 1988. This book provides a lucid and exceptionally well-informed account at the controversial relationship between politics and leisure. The author combines historical and sociological material to show the ways in which 'leisure' has often been a fiercely disputed battleground. Free time and free space have always posed a threat to political authorities, while providing room for experimentation and expression for the citizenry. This has led to extensive attempts at leisure regulation; John Wilson examines the purposes and effectiveness of such regulation in the fields of games sexuality, the mass media, and gambling. He is able to draw on evidence of leisure planning and policy from a wide variety of political regimes, from communist and socialist through social democrat to liberal, conservative, and fascist. The importance of the relationship between political forces and leisure, in subjects as disparate as the future of the Olympic games and the future of full employment, has rarely been so evident. John Wilson has provided an excellent guide to its intricacies.

First published in 1974. Leisure has come to be a vital force in our lives, a part of self-discovery, essential for our well-being. With increased amounts of leisure time, there has been rapid growth in the demand for diverse recreational facilities and their subsequent overuse. With this in mind, it is clear why the planning, managing and administration of recreational resources, particularly in urban areas, is of personal interest to everyone. Land and Leisure introduces the student to all aspects of recreational land use - spatial, economic, behavioural and physical. This second edition is designed to demonstrate some of the basic up-to-date ideas and issues of the last decade and a half that have been influential in shaping decisions, and is concerned both with urban recreation and the uses of resources within metropolitan areas and with the role of the private sector in providing facilities. The book is divided into five parts with discussions ranging over topics such as the individual's recreational needs, recreational land-use evaluation, regional planning and the problems of decision-making and the provision of recreational resources. Its interdisciplinary approach will enable students to understand the problems, concepts, methods and approaches helpful in furthering and integrating their knowledge of recreational resources.

First published in 1987. In the context of the debate about the changing structure of modem economies, the growth of leisure, and the place of work and leisure in society, this book reviews the 'state of the art' of leisure forecasting and the study of leisure futures. It traces man's concern with future leisure from classical and utopian writings to science fiction and 'futurology'. Contemporary issues such as attitudes towards work and leisure, the 'work ethic', education for leisure and measures to share scarce jobs and increase leisure time are discussed in an objective and comprehensive manner. The more technical approaches to leisure forecasting are presented in an accessible and readable form. This book will be of value to students of leisure studies, recreation studies and public policy, to policy makers and planners working in the field, and to all those who have an interest in understanding what is happening to leisure and work in our society.

First published in 1989. In the climate of long-term unemployment, early retirement, and technology that is seen to threaten jobs, 'leisure' has been presented as the solution to a multitude of social problems. The essays in this collection represent the most important arguments on the problems, myths, and misunderstandings of leisure. Arguing from a range of positions, some sceptical, others more idealistic, they look at the complexities of this field and the social and political problems that surround it. No single argument dominates. What emerges is a live-wire debate on class and gender, employment and economic status, age and education, which brings the discussion of leisure controversially up to date. The book, based on papers presented to conferences of the Leisure Studies Association, divides into sections on leisure and social change, the relationship between leisure and social structures, and the tension between leisure and employment. It takes a critical look at leisure in Britain, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the USA, and at the paradoxes that will determine its future. Whilst refusing to see leisure as a synonym for social progress and liberalization, it argues that the quality of leisure reflects the quality of society itself.

First published in 1987. Following an introductory chapter on the nature of theory and the outline of the book, there are eight chapters on the explanatory approaches, or models, employed in this dialectical analysis of the leisure industry. These models focus on particular elements of leisure: experience, decision, development, identities, interaction, institutions, political forces, and human definitions. With a new preface to the re-issue by the author, this title will be of great interest to students of Sociology and Leisure Studies.

In this tenth and celebratory volume in the Research in the Sociology of Sport series, ten recognized and influential sport scholars from around the world reflect on their respective academic journeys. They each address ten salient questions summarizing their career and their view of the current and future status of the sociology of sport. Each chapter addresses four main themes: About the author: who are your mentors and influential figures? What is your research trajectory? About sport: why does sport matter? How should sport be studied? Is sport a panacea for social problems? About practising sociology of sport: is teaching sociology of sport easy? Do sociologists like sport? Is the sociologist of sport a 'public intellectual? About sociology of sport in the academy: does sociology of sport face institutional or industry barriers? What is the future of the sociology of sport? While the ten questions are salient for everyone in the academy irrespective of field of study, they seem particularly trenchant for sociologists of sport as the subfield reaches a chronological milestone and continues to undergo its own 'growing pains' and maturation. Following quickly on the heels of, and conceptually tied to, Volume 9 (Sociology of Sport: A Global Subdiscipline in Review), Volume 10 now completes the 'double celebration' of this book series as the sociology of sport subfield turns 50.

Football Comes Home unearths the cultural, political, and social properties of European football clubs and associations. Christos Kassimeris examines the background of five hundred football clubs and associations from around Europe, providing all the relevant historical information that concerns their origins and standing in society. This book also analyzes the clubs' and associations' emblems, revealing the symbolic significance and a wealth of historical and cultural information. By examining football in a social science context, rather then just a geographic context, this book reveals the ways in which football transcends national boundaries and stereotypes.

Sport can be a vehicle for the expression of identity, and also a factor in the shaping of identity. This book explores the complex interrelationships between nations, regions and states in the landscape of contemporary international sport, with a particular focus on identity. Exploring important themes such as the geopolitics of sports events, contested identities, and ownership of sport and its impact on sporting cultures, the book presents contemporary and historical cases from around the world, including football in a divided Ireland; sport and the anti-Apartheid movement; Chinese sporting nationalism and soft power; and the role of sport media in the shaping of Catalan identity. This is an important resource for students and researchers working in Sports Studies, Sports Journalism, Sports Management Studies, Sports Marketing, Football Studies, Sport and Identity Studies, Sociology of Sport Studies, and Cultural Studies.

This book examines the youth sport parent experience through the lens of social capital, a cornerstone social science concept of the past 30 years. Social capital reflects the value of one's social networks, and the actual and potential benefits - and costs - of relationships. Bringing together a team of kids for a season also brings together their families who all must negotiate this new social world. Within this world, relationships are bound to form, and these are the foundation upon which this project rests. Youth sport scholars have traditionally been interested in questions such as: how many kids play sports, what sports they play, how and why do they start playing and stop playing, and the costs and benefit of participation. However, aside from sensational examples of youth sport parents behaving badly, scholars know far less about the parental experience. This time is meaningful for parents, because parents often spend as much or even more time at the fields than their children. It is thus worth examining what they might get out of this investment. Utilizing two years of fieldwork and over 30 interviews with parents and board members of a youth baseball league in the southwestern United States, this book provides an inside look at the beneficial relationships that can be found in the bleachers of a kids' baseball game, as well as the unseen, high-stakes games waged in the boardroom, where relationships can carry heavy costs as well. This book was originally published as a special issue of Sport in Society.

Austerity is perhaps the major challenge of our times, given the speed at which it arrived and the consequences of its impact upon society. The global financial crash and economic downturn was the catalyst for change and, against a backdrop of advice from experts adverse to Keynesian economics, the ideology of austerity grew and became the dominant thinking to steer economies out of recession. This comprehensive volume draws upon both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies to provide a varied and contextually rich insight into sport, policy, and politics in an era of austerity. The authors cover a wide range of issues in a variety of organisational contexts and geographies, including sports participation across different socio-demographic groups; the impact of austerity on the provision of community sports; disability sport; public management of sport facilities; the performance of public sport facilities with respect to access, finance, utilisation, and customer satisfaction; the potential impact of austerity on sport for development; elite sport; and social inclusion and poverty. This book makes a significant contribution to the current academic debate, while raising important considerations for policymakers and managers. It was originally published as a special issue of The International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics.

This book investigates extreme sports, defined as sports in which athletes challenge and transgress societal perceptions of what is humanly possible to achieve, in terms of physical training and bodily development/performance. Situated within a growing body of literature analysing the impact of new training trends on an individual's body, identity, lifestyle and perception of his/her social surroundings, Extreme Sports, Extreme Bodies focuses on the gendered and embodied experiences of bodybuilding, Ironman triathlon, and mixed martial arts. Through their ethnographic analysis, Andreasson and Johansson present a unique and updated account of the increasing phenomenon of extreme sports and extreme bodies in contemporary Western society, grounded in the sociology of sport, body studies and embodiment literature.

Can activism be considered a leisure activity? Can the Occupy movement, local campaigns for change and lone acts of personal resistance be understood as events? Within the field of Events Management the content of events is generally analyzed within three categories-culture, sport or business. Such a typology can be helpful as a heuristic for interpretation and analysis within a commercial paradigm. However, this framework overlooks and depoliticizes a significant variety of events, those more accurately construed as protest. Protests as Events is the first book to explore activism as a leisure activity and protests as events; using a fresh interpretation of event to develop a new critical politics of events and leisure. Bringing together a range of cutting edge research from around the world, it explores a variety of protests through the lens of events studies and leisure in order to understand how the study of events management might be conceptualized in the protest space.

This book studies how transnationalisation, Europeanisation and migration processes intersect with football fandom, through an analysis of the transnational narratives and practices of Fenerbahce and Galatasaray football fans in Vienna, Austria. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Austria, Turkey and Germany, the author analyses the ways in which narratives about football fandom are often linked to migrant experiences, including practices of (self-)culturalization in the diasporic context in Austria. The book shows how constructed ethnicities and also masculinities and femininities meet in football fan performances and in the construction of what makes a "proper" football fan. Turkish football fandom is a field where powerful prejudices and stereotypes amalgamate and interact. This study enables the reader to look into migration processes and discussions about related topics from a different angle: the love of a football club. Football Fandom and Migration will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, European studies, political sciences, gender studies, leisure studies, sport sociology and history.

When investigating the diverse, complex and changing contemporary field of sport, we recognize there is no methodology that meets the needs of all sport. Sport researchers should take advantage of innovative approaches from other fields to explore emerging phenomena or innovatively advance scholarly sport research approaches. For example, technology, globalization and commercialization may be the principal trends, but they are not the only trends, Sport researchers have the opportunity to study other trends, including the modernization of sport organizations, changing governance practices, regulatory changes, innovation, merchandising, media and broadcasting technologies, socio demographic influences (i.e. aging populations, change in employment patterns, increasing diversity), sport for development, physical activity and sport participation changes. As such, this book introduces innovative research methods and approaches can be applied to the sport discipline. This book was originally published as a special issue of Sport in Society.

Domestic animals are an integral component of human leisure experience and can enhance the physical, social, and mental wellbeing of humans. The interplay of human and animal experiences of justice, wellbeing, rights, and roles within leisure is the central theme of this book. Research explores the position of domesticated animals in human leisure experiences, in a wide array of leisure settings. Chapters question whether domestic animals may have a desire for leisure that is different from human leisure, whether animals have and wish to fulfil needs for meaningful leisure or non-leisure, and whether human leisure needs and desires may coincide or contradict wellbeing interests of animals. This book provides a venue for the dissemination and exploration of research, which champions the welfare and rights of these animals to have their needs and interests in leisure recognised. It moves the debate about animals in leisure beyond the current limits which have seen research mainly confined to the exotic 'other' rather than more mundane, everyday domestic animals. This book will be of interest to individuals in the fields of tourism ethics, zoology, animal behaviour, and leisure studies.

If you attend a soccer match in Buenos Aires of the local Atlanta Athletic Club, you will likely hear the rival teams chanting anti-Semitic slogans. This is because the neighborhood of Villa Crespo has long been considered a Jewish district, and its soccer team, "Club Atletico Atlanta," has served as an avenue of integration into Argentine culture. Through the lens of this neighborhood institution, Raanan Rein offers an absorbing social history of Jews in Latin America.
Since the Second World War, there has been a conspicuous Jewish presence among the fans, administrators and presidents of the Atlanta soccer club. For the first immigrant generation, belonging to this club was a way of becoming Argentines. For the next generation, it was a way of maintaining ethnic Jewish identity. Now, it is nothing less than family tradition for third generation Jewish Argentines to support "Atlanta." The soccer club has also constituted one of the few spaces where both Jews and non-Jews, affiliated Jews and non-affiliated Jews, Zionists and non-Zionists, have interacted. The result has been an active shaping of the local culture by Jewish Latin Americans to their own purposes.
Offering a rare window into the rich culture of everyday life in the city of Buenos Aires created by Jewish immigrants and their descendants, "Futbol, Jews, and the Making of Argentina" represents a pioneering study of the intersection between soccer, ethnicity, and identity in Latin America and makes a major contribution to Jewish History, Latin American History, and Sports History.

In this volume, contributors employ sociological and public health perspectives to offer insights into behaviours common at raves and nightclubs. The volume provides theoretical observations on illicit club drug use and supply, helping to challenge current orthodoxies on the role of drug use within young peoples' lives. Drawing material from the USA, UK and Hong Kong, the volume allows the demystification of stereotypical presentations surrounding young people who attend clubs and/or use club drugs. This work provides a badly needed and objective analysis of youthful drug use, and a foundation from which future sociological and public studies on young people, clubs and drugs - as well as young people themselves - will benefit.

This book gives voice to a group of leisure scholars who are engaged in conversations about sustainability. Beginning with discussions on the relationship between leisure and sustainability and how these concepts are addressed in current literature, a case is made for continued investigation of how leisure and sustainability need to be better understood; and viewed as integrally linked. The book discusses issues related to environmental sustainability; how, at the local level, leisure is considered as a solution to a range of social, environmental, and economic issues; and the value of leisure as an asset for addressing several social sustainability challenges. This book was originally published as a special issue of Leisure/Loisir: Journal of the Canadian Association for Leisure Studies.

What does it mean to work in the 'hip' postmodern economy? This book develops the concept of 'affected labour' within Melbourne, Australia. Through the lens of cafe and bar culture, the book provides an ethnographic investigation into the ways that affect arises, circulates, sticks and dissipates over the course of everyday encounters. The dynamics and atmospheres of affective labour among those working in the hospitality-oriented environments are unfolded. Service work is rooted in the notion that labour is 'performed' by an exhausted worker for a demanding customer. This book goes beyond this idea by describing the way not only consumers are moved by the experience and seduced by the atmosphere, but more pressingly workers and employers. This book reveals the ways in which workers themselves are capitalised on by being affected pleasurably in the moment, fuelling an economy of short-term desires in which 'affected labourers' are manipulated.

The term 'record collecting' is shorthand for a variety of related practices. Foremost is the collection of sound recordings in various formats - although often with a marked preference for vinyl - by individuals, and it is this dimension of record collecting that is the focus of this book. Record collecting, and the public stereotypes associated with it, is frequently linked primarily with rock and pop music. Roy Shuker focuses on these broad styles, but also includes other genres and their collectors, notably jazz, blues, exotica and 'ethnic' music. Accordingly, the study examines the history of record collecting; profiles collectors and the collecting process; considers categories - especially music genres - and types of record collecting and outlines and discusses the infrastructure within which collecting operates. Shuker situates this discussion within the broader literature on collecting, along with issues of cultural consumption, social identity and 'the construction of self' in contemporary society. Record collecting is both fascinating in its own right, and provides insights into broader issues of nostalgia, consumption and material culture.

Digital worlds and cultures-social media, web 2.0, youtube, wearable technologies, health and fitness apps-dominate, if not order, our everyday lives. We are no longer 'just' consumers or readers of digital culture but active producers through facebook, twitter, Instagram, youtube and other emerging technologies. This book is predicated on the assumption that out understanding of our everyday lives should be informed by what is taking place in and through emerging technologies given these (virtual) environments provide a crucial context where traditional, categorical assumptions about the body, identity and leisure may be contested. Far from being 'virtual', the body is constituted within and through emerging technologies in material ways. Recent 'moral panics' over the role of digital cultures in teen suicide, digital drinking games, an endless array of homoerotic images of young bodies being linked with steroid use, disordered eating and body dissatisfaction, facebook games/fundraising campaigns (e.g. for breast cancer), movements devoted to exposing 'everyday sexism' / metoo, twitter abuse (of feminists, of athletes, of racist nature to name but a few), speak to the need for critical engagement with digital cultures. While some of the earlier techno-utopian visions offered the promise of digitality to give rise to participatory, user generator collaborations, within this book we provide critical engagement with digital technologies and what this means for our understandings of leisure cultures. The chapters originally published in a special issue in Leisure Studies.

The history of sport in socialist Yugoslavia is a peculiar lens through which to examine the country's social, cultural and political transformations. Sport is represented as one of the most popular and engaging cultural phenomena of social life. Sport both embodied the social dynamics of the socialist period as well as revealing questions of the everyday lives of the Yugoslav people. Ultimately, sport was closely intertwined with the country's overall destiny. This volume offers an introduction into the myriad social functions that sport served in the Yugoslav socialist project. It illustrates how sport was central to the establishment of Yugoslavia's physical and leisure culture in the early post-Second World War period, an international promotional tool for Yugoslav communists championing the ideological superiority of the 'Brotherhood and Unity' and the Non-Aligned Movement, as well as a social field in which the ideological contradictions of Yugoslav socialism became increasingly apparent. The chapters expand the existing knowledge of the processes that defined Yugoslav sport and contribute to a more nuanced understanding of socialist Yugoslavia in the years between 1945 and 1991. This book was originally published as a special issue of The International Journal of the History of Sport.

It is increasingly acknowledged that an analysis of emotions is necessary to fully understand the social world, and recent research on transport, travel and mobilities has begun to consider the gendered nature of public and personal life in relation to this sphere. A The focus of this multidisciplinary and auto/biographical volume is the emotional relationship that individuals and groups have with different means of travel. Attention is given to a variety of travel experiences, including travelling in trains, planes, cars, buses and ships, as well as biking, cycling, running and walking, from the perspective of travellers and those who earn their living in assisting these experiences of others. Imaginary travel and the relationships between art and travel are also considered. A Adopting innovative approaches to experiential material ranging from personal memories to empirical research, Gendered Journeys, Mobile Emotions opens up and illuminates an interdisciplinary debate about the gendered, emotive and emotional nature of travelling.

Wild animals form an integral component of the human leisure experience. They are a significant part of the leisure industry and are economically valuable entities. However, as sentient beings, animals also have rights and welfare needs, and, like humans, may also have their own leisure desires and requirements. This collection provides an in-depth analysis of the rights and welfare of humans and wild animals as the two relate to one another within the sphere of leisure studies. It examines a wide array of animals, such as wolves, elephants, dolphins and apes, in a diverse range of leisure settings in international locations, from captive wild animals in zoos, hunting, swimming with dolphins and animals used as educators and for tourist entertainment. This book provides a forum for future considerations of wild animals and leisure and a voice for animal welfarist agendas that seek to improve the conditions under which wild animals interact with and are engaged with by humans.

As a new breed of lifestyle sport enthusiasts 'derby grrrls' are pushing the boundaries of gender as they negotiate the nexus of pleasure, pain and power relations. Offering a socio-cultural analysis of the rise and reinvention of roller derby as both a new, globalized women's sport and an everyday creative leisure space, this book explores the manner in which roller derby has emerged as a gendered space for self-transformation, belonging and embodied contest, in which women are invited to experience their emotions differently, embrace pain and overcome limits. Sport, Gender and Power: The Rise of Roller Derby presents detailed interview, ethnographic and autoethnographic material, together with a range of media texts to shed new light on the complex relationships of power experienced by women in derby as a sport culture, whilst also examining the darker relationships that characterise the sport, including those of inclusion and exclusion, difference and identity, and competition and participation. A contemporary feminist study of empowerment, sexual difference, gender and affect, this book will appeal to scholars of gender and sexuality, embodiment, feminist thought and the sociology of sport and leisure.