It Is Clear That Current Leisure Often Involves Activities Such As Adventure and Risk-Taking

Introduction

It is clear that current leisure often involves activities such as adventure and risk-taking, eating fast food, visiting heritage sites and theme parks, downloading pornography, or taking illegal drugs (with or without accompanying clubbing). Many of these activities in turn involve the consumption of commercially-provided goods and services, which offer the usual dilemmas of choice and freedom, commercial agendas and personal uses. The topics can be used to examine Leisure Studies critically, and to focus on real-life complexities, including ethical dilemmas.

These activities can usefully be developed to introduce the topic to undergraduates so they can practice and experience some of the academic debates and techniques in the field. Students will often be able to bring with them personal experiences which exceed those of lecturers, and thus can make a genuine contribution to a critical debate, both using experience to test theories, and theories to extend experience. Leisure experiences of this kind are widely studied and discussed in a range of academic journals and traditions, but Leisure Studies offers a more fruitful tradition of academic work to study these areas than do either the traditional Social Science disciplines or British Cultural Studies, both of which have self-imposed limits of different kinds.

There are even vocational outcomes in studying these topics. Leisure industries catering for popular tastes have been very successful commercially. There is also an increasing interest in regulating some of the excesses, leading to strong policy and cultural initiatives to ban, regulate or dissuade. Students examining some of the argument and research in these areas are in an excellent position to engage in these debates as practitioners in subsequent careers.

In what follows, recent journal articles rend to dominate. These offer substantial lists of relevant resources of their own in the form of bibliographies and reviews of the literature, as well as containing up-to-date work often based on some original research demonstrating some useful research techniques and methods. The articles are often particularly suitable for students in terms of length and level. One article can appear in several sections and be read for different immediate purposes.

The relative difficulty of obtaining these articles has now been largely solved thanks to full-text electronic databases such as EBSCO or ZETOC, which permit electronic delivery to desktops inside or outside or university premises on a round-the-clock basis. The search engines are well designed and permit rapid and effective searches of enormous archives. Publishers of online journals, especially Sage, sometimes offer free trial periods of full text access as well. The collection below is obviously limited and personal, but these new search, location and delivery techniques permit easy independent exploration of resources and can be used to foster ‘syllabus independence’ in students.

Many of the articles listed below are reviewed and summarised at greater length on my personal website where they are ordered and grouped slightly differently – see http://www.arasite.org/keyconc.html. The intention is to complete the reviews and to add updated material on that site. Some of the background sociological pieces are also rendered as ‘Reading Guides’ on http://www.arasite.org/sagelist.htm.

Annotated Bibliography

Adding leisure values to goods

In recent years, a number of manufacturers have realised that there is a possibility of marketing their goods as having specific uses for leisure. The classic examples are the Sony Walkman or sports footwear, but other goods include children’s trading cards or Barbie dolls. No-one really needs to buy these goods, but a large number of people are willing to buy them because they become associated with leisure values, with freedom, choice, personal development and the general qualities of popular music or sport such as a sense of personal liberation. Analysis of this association leads to important questions about choice and how it can be cleverly manipulated by leisure companies, as well as setting the context to explain the increased importance of personal leisure in social life.

Armstrong, K. (1999) Nike's Communication with Black Audiences. A Sociological Analysis of Advertising Effectiveness via Symbolic Interactionism. Journal of Sport and Social Issues 23(3), 266-286.

On the controversial attempts to connect Nike products with US black sporting culture. Some good examples of Nike advertisements.

Bull, M. (2002)The Seduction Of Sound in Consumer Culture. Investigating Walkman desires. Journal of Consumer Culture 2(1), 81-101.

Initially rather general and abstract on the importance of soundscapes, but ultimately an insightful exploration of the pleasures of listening to Walkmans (or, these days, MP3 players?) -- users gain an imaginary control over their surroundings.

Cook, D. (2001) Exchange Value as Pedagogy in Children's Leisure: Moral Panics in Children's Culture at Century's End. Leisure Sciences 23, 81-98.

Excellent discussion of children as consumers, focusing on trading cards, Pokemon and Beanie Babies and the moral panics and paradoxes around them.

Du Gay, P., Hall, S., James, L., Mackay, H., Negus, K. (1997) Doing cultural studies: the story of the Sony Walkman. London: Sage Publications in association with the Open University Press.

An account of the success of the Sony Walkman in particular, but of similar leisure goods in general, focusing on the ‘articulation’ of cultural meanings, customer use, design aspects and engineering possibilities.

Goldman, R. and Papson, S. (1998) Nike Culture, London: Sage Publications.

A substantial and detailed analysis of the commercial strategy of Nike and the way it has embraced popular culture. Another model of the circulation of culture and economic capital designed for more general use as with Du Gay et al. (above). Critical analysis of Nike advertising especially.

Helstein, M. (2003)That's Who I Want To Be. The Politics and Production of Desire Within Nike Advertising to Women. Journal of Sport and Social Issues 27(3), 276-292.

An insightful piece with some rather heavyweight -- but manageable-- theoretical material drawn from poststructralist feminism. Tries to analyse Nike's appeal to women in terms of the notions of emancipation and excellence embodied in the advertisements.

Rogers, M. (1999) Barbie Culture, London: Sage Publications.

Describes and critiques the marketing strategies of Mattel in adding values to their product. Briefly discusses the ways in which consumers have responded, sometimes critically.

Ritzer, G. and Stillman, T. (2001) The Postmodern Ballpark as a Leisure Setting: Enchantment and Simulated De- McDonaldization. Leisure Sciences 23, 99-113.

The general work on disenchantment applied to commercialised baseball. Baseball teams have tried to widen the appeal of their sport by including spectacles, heritage parks and themed areas to their stadia. The analysis easily invites application to British sports.

Sheff, D. (1993) Game Over: Nintendo’s battle to dominate an industry, London: Hodder and Stoughton Ltd.

An interesting journalistic account of the commercial struggles to develop the company, which range far beyond the ability to add leisure values and include the normal processes of managing competition with rivals and coping with regulation. A useful corrective to the more ‘ideological’ accounts.

Adventure and Risk

The interest in adventure and risk as a part of leisure may be growing generally, and it is certainly important to the leisure pursuits of young people such as students. This topic helps raise issues of the social background or context of what looks like an entirely personal activity – the notion of a ‘risk society’ in various formulations. In theoretical terms, adventure and risk can also cover a number of activities which exceed the obvious cases, such as gambling or even the pursuit of a hobby. Riding motorcycles offers a particularly good case study. Many of these activities are the focus of legislation too, and the pieces examined below often contain policy implications to reduce social harm while maintaining personal freedom. Studying the pleasures of adventure as a form of escape raises interesting methodological issues too, since exposing oneself to risk can appear to be so irrational for non-participants, and the pleasures are notoriously hard to pin down and study. Students can be challenged to explore risky activities about which they may have strong personal feelings.

Beck, U. (1992) Risk Society. London: Sage Publications Inc.

A challenging read, but much-cited as a backdrop for the interest in adventure.

Beezer, A.(1995)Women and "adventure travel" tourism'. New Formations 21, 119-130.

Summarises some female travel writing, critiques male heroics in male travel writing in the C19th. Critiques modern adventure holidays and their search for postmodern forms of authenticity which manage risks.

Bellaby, P and Lawrenson, D. (2001)Approaches to the risk of riding motorcycles: reflections on the problem of reconciling statistical risk assessment and motorcyclists' own reasons for riding. The Sociological Review, 368-388.

Discussion of the contrast between official statistical accounts of risk and estimates of the motorcyclists themselves. A general model of the social dimensions of risk ensues.

Jones, C., Hollenhorst, S., Perna, F. (2003)An Empirical Comparison of the Four-Channel Flow Model and Adventure Experience Paradigm. Leisure Sciences 25, 17-31.

A rather technical piece with some useful material on operationalising and actually testing for 'flow' and explaining the attractions of adventure experience.

Journal of Consumer Culture (2001) Interview with Ulrich Beck. Journal of Consumer Culture 1(2), 261-277.

A much more manageable summary of Beck on risk and modernity, with implications for consumerism (including a brief aside on McDonaldization). In interview form. Includes a useful list of Beck’s publications.

Kjølsrød, L. (2003) Adventure Revisited: On Structure and Metaphor in Specialized Play. Sociology 37(3), 459-476.

An account of the role of 'adventure' (broadly defined as in Simmel and Goffman) in developing self-identity and offering other aspects of adult play.

Le Breton, D. (2000) Playing Symbolically with Death in Extreme Sports. Body and Society 6(1), 1-11.

Lyricaldescriptions of the ecstatic pleasures of extreme sports and ordeals. Tries out 'flow' as an explanation, but prefers his own Durkheimian account to do with relating egos to constraints.

Natalier, K. (2001)Motorcyclists' interpretations of risk and hazard. Journal of Sociology 37(1), 65-80.

An Australian study of how bikers sideline official definitions of risk and maintain their own 'lived reality'. Some (unusual) critical comments about biker culture.

Peretti-Watel, P(2003)Neutralisation theory and the denial of risk: some evidence from cannabis use among French adolescents. British Journal of Sociology 54(1), 21-42.

Part of a larger French study on drug-taking. Adds discussion of techniques to deny risk and re-assert normality, based on the classic work by Sykes and Matza.

Rojek, C. (1993) Ways of Escape, modern transformations in leisure and travel. London: Macmillan.

Good sections on the closing of traditional avenues of adventure in modernity and the paradoxical and unsatisfactory forms of escape that remain.

Bodies

The emergence of a sociology of the body has raised important issues in social theory, and these are especially pertinent to the study of leisure. Much leisure activity involves pleasures located in the body, for example, as some of the examples below indicate (such as sport, fitness or bodily displays such as tattooing or piercing). Students are often able to bring participants’ knowledge to these activities. Much leisure activity also shares with other areas of life a lot of assumptions about ‘normal’ bodies and ‘disability’. These are often picked up in specific policy discussions about participation for the disabled, but the more general issues are worth exploring as well.

Bourdieu, P. (1993) Sociology in Question, London: Sage Publications.

A collection of short and readable pieces summarising some of the main themes. Includes the chapter on sport as involving (class) struggles over the legitimate shape and use of bodies.

Curry, D. (1993) Decorating the body politic. New Formations 19, 69—82.

On tattooing and piercing as neo-tribal involvement and as a reconceptualisation of the symbolic importance of bodies.

Fisher, J. (2002) Tattooing the Body, Making Culture. Body and Society 8(4), 91-107.

A study of US tattooing, its history, associations with class and gender, and the reasons for its popularity in modernity.

Franklin, A.(2001)Neo-Darwinian Leisure, the Body and Nature: Hunting and Angling in Modernity. Body and Society 7(4), 57-76.

Good account of sociological approaches to hunting and fishing. Tries to develop a 'sociology of the body' alternative, not always successfully. Criticises figurational accounts. Pursues the issue of the real pleasures of bloodsports.

Fussell, S. (1992) Muscle: Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder. London: Abacus.

An autobiographical account of a bodybuilder joining the subculture of professionals and offering an insider account.

Goffman, E. (1968) Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Harmondsworth: Pelican Books.

Still the best work on the social importance of disablement and how both the stigmatised and the ‘normals’ manage their interactions. A good demonstration of Goffman’s early research technique too.

Grogan, S. and Richards, H. (2002) Body Image. Focus Groups with Boys and Men. Men and Masculinities 4(3), 219-32.

A study of male concerns about their bodies based on focus-group methods (which are defended strongly). Men do care how they look but have to take care to develop the right sort of muscularity, and avoid obsession.

Hoogland, R. (2002)Fact and Fantasy: the body of desire in the age of post humanism. Journal of Gender Studies 11(3), 213-231.

A very thoughtful piece on what human bodies actually are in cultural terms, and on the important role fantasy plays in embodiment.

Hughes, B. (2002) Bauman’s strangers: impairment and the invalidation of disabled people in modern and postmodern cultures. Disability and Society. 17(54), 571-584.

A very useful account of ‘disabled’ people as classic ‘Others’, still there by implication in discussions of normality in modernity.

Jefferson, T. (1998) Muscle, “Hard Men” and “Iron” Mike Tyson: Reflections on Desire Anxiety and the Embodiment of Masculinity. Body and Society 4(1), 77-98.

A speculative reflection based on some extensive reading of works on masculinity and its embodiment (including some of those cited above). Has a special interest in ‘hard men’ like Tyson, and discusses connections with class and ‘race’.

Light, R. and Kirk, D. (2000) High School Rugby, the Body and the Reproduction of Hegemonic Masculinity. Sport, Education and Society. 5(2), 163-176.

Uses Foucault and Bourdieu to illuminate fieldwork undertaken during rugby training at a boy’s school in Australia. Particular significance is attached to body-shaping regimes as central to hegemonic masculinity.

Maguire, J. (2002)Body Lessons: fitness publishing and the cultural production of the fitness consumer. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 37(3-4), 449-464.