Leisures meanings through ..

1
Leisures meanings through ..

• The humanities
• Ancient history
• Contemporary connotations

2
Chapter demonstrates .

• that leisure is contextual to place, era, and
  people.

3
For example, what meanings of leisure might be
portrayed here?

• What is the time period?
• Who are the people?
• What is the place?

4
Humanities

• Areas of creation whose subject is human
  experience.

5
Humanities

• Literature, art, and music offer glimpses of
  leisures meaning.
• As interpersonal unifying force?
• As emotional outlet?
• As peace and quiet?
• As contact with nature?
• As idleness?
• As excitement?
• As sociability?
• As ..?

6
Leisure legacies from ancient cultures

• The arts
• Contemplation
• Learning
• Mass spectacle
• Life balance
• Festivals and holidays
• Relaxation
• Sports

7
Contemporary Meanings

• FREE TIME leisure is the weekend
• RECREATION ACTIVITY leisure is watching TV
• ATTITUDE leisure is making the most out of my
  life

8
Common Leisure Qualities

• Happiness Relaxation
• Pleasure Ritual
• Freedom Solitude
• Intrinsic reward Commitment
• Play Spirituality
• Game Risk
• Humor

9
Leisure as freedom .

• from escape from the necessities of life
• to making the most of possibilities

10
Leisure as intrinsic reward .

• comes from doing something for its own reasons
• (extrinsic reward comes as a payoff)

11
Aristotles philosophy of eudaimonia

• happiness is engaging in worthwhile pursuits

12
The roots of pleasure

• Cynicism virtue is goal of life
• Skepticism accept what is conventional
• Stocism follow reason
• Epicureanism pleasure in moderation
• Hedonism pleasure is goal of life

13
Play Theories (Table 2.2)

• Older Surplus Energy
• Preparation
• Relaxation
• More Recent Catharsis
• Behavioristic
• Psychoanalytic
• Contemporary Arousal Seeking
• Competence-Effectance

14
Types of play in games

• Agon competitive skilled
• Alea fate
• Mimicry role-playing
• Illinx sensory

15
Sources of leisure ritual

• Holidays
• Site sacralization
• Decorum

16
Types of Intelligence

• IQ intellectual and rational intelligences
• EQ emotional intelligence
• SoQ social intelligence
• SQ spiritual intelligence (finding life
  meaning)

17
Indications of a Highly Developed SQ

• The capacity to be flexible (actively and
  spontaneously adaptive)
• A high degree of self-awareness
• The quality of being inspired by vision and
  values
• A tendency to see the connections between diverse
  things (being holistic)
• Being field-independent (possessing a facility
  for working against convention)
• A tendency to ask Why? or What if? questions

18
Cultural Capital

• an individuals store of behaviors and
  knowledge that pays off for succeeding in a
  culture
• Leisure is a main contributor to cultural capital.

19
Situation Factors Affect Leisure Behavior

• Age
• Gender
• Ethnicity
• Race
• Income
• Educational level
• Occupation
• Residence

20
Lifestyle

• The stew pot of all demographic factors
• - a pattern for living
• - leisure is an important dimension
• - lifestyle types (such as the VALS)

21
Theoretical Explanations for Leisure Behavior

• Compensation and spillover
• Kellys Types
• Neulingers Paradigm
• Flow
• Adventure Experience Paradigm
• Self-as-Entertainment
• Theory of Anti-Structure

22
The Role of Intrinsic Determination

• Kellys Theory of Leisure Types intrinsic
  meaning
• Neulingers Paradigm intrinsic motivation
• Csikszentmihalyis Flow autotelic
• Mannells Self-As-Entertainment use of self as
  means of filling time

23
And, so, the story is

• Leisure behaviors are difficult to explain.
• Yet, formal theories from the basic disciplines
  do explain aspects of leisure behavior.
• While there is some research support, leisure
  theories are still at the conceptual level.

24
Leisure and Our Development

• Leisure stimulates and eases the transitions of
  change yet remains constant throughout life.

25
Leisure Contributes to Physical Development By

• Developing motor control when young
• And, as an aid to staying physically vital when
  old

26
Leisure Contributes to Emotional Development By

• Teaching joy, affection, and other positive
  feelings
• Helping us cope with anger, fear, anxiety, and
  other negative feelings

27
Leisure Contributes to Intellectual Development
By

• Helping the learning process
• Sharpening such skills as language, intelligence,
  and creativity

28
Leisure Contributes to Social Development By

• Helping us achieve and remain vibrant within a
  social network

29
Social Interaction in Play (Table 4.1)

• Non-social play unfocused
• Solitary play playing alone
• Onlooker play observing others
• Parallel play playing alongside each other but
  not interacting
• Associative play some interaction
• Cooperative play fully interactive

30
When Social Learning Harms Leisure

• Guilt and Worry I shouldnt spend so much time
  pursuing my leisure interests.
• Over-choice I must keep busy.
• Lessened Enjoyment Im only doing this activity
  because my friends are.

31
Leisures Anthropology

• Leisure is powerful in how cultures are
• characterized
• changed

32
Characteristics of Culture

• Shared
• Learned
• Symbols
• Integrated

33
Mechanisms of cultural change

• Innovation
• Diffusion
• Loss
• Acculturation

34
Sahlins Hunches about Paleolithic People

• The original leisure society?
• worked less than todays standard
• had fewer material possessions to care for

35
Modernization and Leisure

• Ethnocentricity
• Postmodernism
• Well-being
• Is leisure better or worse off as a result of
  modernization?

36
Sources of a Cultures Well-Being

• Understanding your environment and how to control
  it.
• Social support from family and friends.
• Species drive satisfaction.
• Satisfaction of physical well-being drives.
• Satisfaction of aesthetica nd sensory drives.
• Satisfaction of exploratory drive.

37
Leisures Geographic Significance

• As Space leisures pattern, density,
  and concentration
• As Place peoples strong attachment
  to specific leisure places

38
Crowding in Leisure
39
Perceptions of crowding result from

• Personal characteristics of visitors
• Characteristics of other visitors encountered
• Nature of the outdoor setting

40
Leisure and Distance

• Distance decay
• Space-time
• compression

41
Place Attachment

• an emotional bond for particular places

42
Place Identity

• places reflect
• individual meanings

43
Examples of management implications of leisure
and geography

• Conservation
• Preservation
• Wilderness
• Sustainable
• tourism

44
Characteristics of Common Culture

• Engaged in most often
• Commercial
• Trendy
• Specific to age groups

45
Television Research

• From Kubey and Csikszentmihalyi (1990)
• - television viewing is a passive, relaxing,
  low-concentration activity
• - motivation to watch is often driven by a
  wish to escape
• - watching TV becomes less rewarding the longer
  it is viewed

46
Our biological orienting response
47
Corners (1999) Pleasures of TV Watching

• Scopophilia .
• Pleasures of knowledge
• Pleasures of comedy
• Pleasures of fantasy
• Pleasures of distraction, diversion, and routine

48
Criticisms of Disney Theme Parks

• From Rojek (1993)
• - go beyond entertainment
• - present moralistic and idealized version of
  American way
• From Bryman (1995)
• - too much control of the experience

49
Is mediated and commercialized common culture a
good thing?

• Amusing Ourselves to Death
• (1986)
• by Neil Postman

50
Technology is Important to Leisure

• Enhanced traditional pastimes
• Invented new pastimes

51
cyberculture

• Electronic mail
• Word processing
• Games
• Chat rooms
• Hypertext
• Digital multimedia
• On and on

52

• Computer based leisure is perhaps the second most
  popular pastime (just behind television watching)

53
Computer Assisted Leisure

• Games (positive values?)
• Simulated leisure (fidelity?)

54
Technology as Leisure

• The Internet (the cyberhood?)

55
Social Capital

• the interpersonal networks that make a
  community cohesive

56

• Bowling Alone
• The Collapse and
• Revival of American Community
• (1995)
• Robert Putnam

57
Taboo Recreation

• forbidden by custom, belief, law

58
Why Taboo Recreation?

• Anomie lack of purpose and identity resulting
  in the demise of social norms
• Differential association learned through
  contact with others
• Retreatist lifestyle a matter of personal
  expression

59
Leisure Boredom

• when you feel you cannot escape a meaningless
  leisure routine

60
Taboo Recreation That Injures Self

• A matter of ideational mentality
• For example,
• - substance abuse
• - compulsive participation
• - gambling

61
Taboo Recreation That Injures Others

• A matter of sensate mentality
• For example,
• - vandalism
• - taboo sex

62
The Dilemma of Goodness

• If leisure is a matter of personal attitudes and
  preferences, distinctions of worth and goodness
  for specific pastimes are useless.
• or
• If Aristotle is correct, and leisure is making
  moral free-time choices, certain pursuits are
  unworthy and bad.

63
Using Leisure for Social Good

• As nations become more industrialized, they
  become more reliant on leisure as a tool for
  solving problems.
• This can be demonstrated through the history of
  organized leisure services in the United States.

64
The Story

• Began as a play movement
• Became a wide sweeping social movement
• Leisure became a means to create better lives
• Involved cities, states, and the federal
  government
• As well as private organizations

65
The Industrial Revolution
66
The Pioneers
67
Using Leisure as Social Reform

• City parks
• National parks
• The Lyceum movement
• Voluntary agencies
• The Settlement House Movement
• The Playground Movement

68
Transitions in Leisures Use as a Social Tool

• Kids ? all ages
• Summer ? year-long
• Outdoor ? indoor
• Urban ? rural
• Voluntary ? government
• Freely expressed ? organized
• Simple ? complex
• Facilities ? programs
• Individual ? group

69
The Tragedy of the Commons

• The problem of unlimited access to commonly held
  resources that inevitably leads to an erosion of
  the quality of the leisure environment itself.
• 
  (based on the ideas of Hardin)

70
Recreation Needs Government Involvement

• Expressed a neutral provider
• Comparative fills gaps only for people in need
• Created actively promotes leisure because
  people dont know what they want
• Normative provides only certain
  well- established kinds of recreation
• Felt lets the people choose what they want

71
The Web of Leisure and Economics

• Economic development
• Capitalism
• Consumerism

72
A new ethic?

• our ethic of open-ended consumption of goods
  has simply carried over to the consumption of
  experiences, making time not money the ultimate
  scarce commodity.
• Academy of Leisure Sciences,
• White Paper 8)

73
Gen Y The First Wave

• Adults aged 18-24
• Optimistic about earning power
• Expect to have money because they want it
• Say the one thing that would improve their lives
  is having more money
• 37 currently own 3 credit cards
• Average monthly discretionary spending of
  full-time undergraduate college students is 179

74
Gen Y The Second Wave

• Teens aged 12-17
• Spent 155 billion in 2000
• Average weekly spending 85
• Mostly spending this money on clothing
• 18 own stocks or bonds
• 30 are interested in getting their own credit
  card

75
Gen Y The Third Wave

• Kids aged 7-11
• Spend an average of 4.72 a week of their own
  money
• Impact of this spending 10 billion a year
• Plus theres the spending they influence (260
  billion annually)

76
What would you do?

• For 1 million would you be willing to never
  again see or talk to your best friend?
• Would you be willing to give up all television
  for the rest of your life if it would provide for
  1,000 starving children?
• If you had 1,000 to either spend on a nice
  vacation or relatives, which would you choose?

77
The character of leisure and consumption today

• The activities of the rich now the expectations
  of the masses
• Leisure expressions are diverse a consequence
  of increased discretionary income
• Leisure experiences have increased in quality
• In leisure we continually compare our lifestyle
  and possessions to others
• Spending money for leisure goods and experiences
  is the standard of belonging

78
Juliette Schors The Overspent American
79
How Leisure Benefits an Economy

• Expenditures and investments
• Employment
• Property values

80
How Leisure Harms an Economy

• Accidents
• Negative balance of payments

81
Of Time and Work

• While leisure is typically prescribed as the cure
  for the problems of time and work
• It has also adopted many of the characteristics
  that make them problematic in the first place.

82
Types of Time

• Cyclical time time is constant and returning
• Mechanical time time is linear, never returning
• Biological time time is the rhythm of the
  living organism
• Social and cultural time time is set by social
  and cultural conditions

83
Time Tyrannies Against Leisure

• Time urgency
• Time deepening

84
Leisure Takes Place in Time as

• Personal perceptions of free time
• Adherence to clock time
• The time needs of leisure activities
• A cultures time sufficiency

85
The ancient Greek idea

• Homo faber work is part of being human
• Homo ludens play is part of being human

86
The Rewards of Work

• Money
• Central identity
• Human interaction
• Sense of contributing
• Its relation to leisure?

87
Leisures Relation to Work

• Pessimistic view workaholism, play-aversion
• Optimistic view alternatives to work work
  becomes more like leisure
• Neutral view central life interest

88
Leisure and Equity

• There is not yet equity in leisure.
• Leisure has the potential of being a great equity
  maker.

89
Types of Leisure Constraints

• Structural architectural barriers
• Intrapersonal individual psychological states
  that intervene
• Interpersonal barriers from social interactions
  with friends, family

90
Womens Inequity in Leisure

• Less time and priority
• Combining role obligations
• At home and unstructured
• Fragmented
• Do not feel entitled

91
Explanations for Differences in Leisure
Participation among Ethnic Groups

• Marginality thesis a function of lack of
  opportunity
• Ethnicity thesis culturally based value
  systems, norms, and socialization patterns

92
Immigrant Typology

• Autonomous (Amish, Jews, Mormons)
• Voluntary immigrant (Cubans, Haitians,
  Mexicans)
• Involuntary non-immigrant (African-Americans,
  Native Americans, Native Alaskans, and Native
  Hawaiians)

93
Leisure Issues for Persons with Disabilities

• Self-determination
• Self-advocacy
• Normalization
• Integration