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.

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.

How has it come to be that paid work is seen as the primary avenue for attaining sustenance, self-esteem, and human dignity? This book encourages scholars and practitioners to rethink the relationships between leisure, social policy, and human development. Drawing on the expertise of some of the most innovative minds in the field of leisure studies from across Canada, Decentring Work questions how and why we have come to value paid employment as the marker of social success and individual self-worth and, more provocatively, investigates the role that leisure might play in its stead. The contributors probe the dimensions of marginalization and oppression experienced by groups such as women living in poverty, aboriginal youth, new immigrants, and older adults and show how leisure can be a vital element in confronting issues in the social construction of homelessness, incarceration, dementia care, disability, and ethnicity. Using a mix of approaches from in-depth empirical studies to more conceptually driven discussions, the chapters in Decentring Work weave together effectively into a treatise on notions of work, leisure, power, and social change. This collection is essential reading for anyone in the field of leisure studies, recreation, or social work who is interested in the role that leisure can and should play in reshaping human and community development.