The Politics of Leisure

This book explores entanglements between politics and leisure, ranging from the electorate's concerns with public recreation resources, to the presence of politics in casual conversation, and to the use of leisure as a means of preserving racial hierarchies in society. In noting the contributions of past scholarship, it also points toward a trend of increasingly political leisure research, where research helps to unpack the multiple ways in which power suffuses the experience of leisure. A contrast between 'being political', on one hand, and the tribal politicization that characterizes much of contemporary social life, on the other hand, demonstrates that scholars and educators can and should be engaged in politically-oriented scholarship, while also building a more diverse and intellectually productive academy. This edited volume will be of great interest to researchers and scholars interested in race, power, polarization, and the interrelationship between politics and leisure. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Leisure Sciences.

Rudy Dunlap is Professor in the Department of Health and Human Performance at Middle Tennessee State University. His research addresses leisure as a sociocultural context for community development and social change. His previous projects have explored volunteer participation in community gardening and experiences of urban cycling. Justin Harmon is Assistant Professor in the Department of Community and Therapeutic Recreation at UNCG. His research focuses primarily on community, health and aging, and the use of leisure for coping for people with serious and terminal diseases, and the use of music for affecting quality of life. Jeff Rose is Assistant Professor-Lecturer in the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism at the University of Utah. His research employs qualitative and spatial methods to examine systemic inequities expressed through class, race, political economy, and relationships to nature.

1. A People's History of Leisure Studies: Leisure, the Tool of Racecraft 2. Playing While Black 3. Examining the Use of Leisure for the Sociopolitical Development of Black Youth in Out-of-School Time Programs 4. Urban Subversion and Mobile Cinema: Leisure, Architecture and the "Kino-Cine-Bomber" 5. Home of (or for?) Champions? The Politics of High-Performance/Elite and Community sport at New Zealand's Home of Cycling 6. Ordinary Political Conversation in Seemingly Nonpolitical Leisure: All Talk and No Action? 7. We Aren't So Different After All: Differences and Similarities Between Political Affiliation and Issues of Park Use, Management, and Privatization