The Sociology of Leisure LARC08/SOC C09

Introduction

This first year 30 credit module introduces some material on the sociology of leisure that is relevant to both Sociologists and Leisure Studies students. The material discusses some major features of current leisure patterns, but these activities are also central to modern life itself and thus have interests for sociologists. More technically:

  1. These topics show the importance of a sociological approach to leisure. It might not be obvious at first that leisure pursuits have a sociological dimension at all, but we can see that leisure is not just a matter of personal choice. Instead, it is patterned and affected by social pressures and conventions.
  2. Leisure activities happen to be ideal for testing and applying some sociological approaches to general topics like bodies or risk.

Outcomes

At the end of the module students should be able to:

  1. Understand some basic sociological approaches and concepts
  2. Apply those concepts to discussions of leisure pursuits and practices
  3. Begin to grasp relationships between individual meanings and social patterns
  4. Begin to consider some implications for leisure policies and the role of the State

Teaching Style

We want to pursue a blended learning approach on this module. We have provided some electronic material for each topic, in the form of an RLO (reusable learning object). These RLOs are available for you to download and work through in your own time. They often contain basic summaries of the central arguments, together with some links to further reading, and some suggested activities. When we meet face to face in seminar and tutorial groups, we will use those activities as the initial basis for our discussions. You will be able to raise issues of your own in those sessions too, so please make a note of any matters arising as you work through the RLOs. You can also discuss matters with each other on the module discussion board and chat room (or on your own chat and messaging facilities if you wish).

RLOs vary in size and complexity, and some of the larger ones take up more than one week’s work. We indicate expected time-scales in each case.

Suggested Learning Styles

There are a number of ways to work through this material.

  • It is possible to just work through the pages of each RLO in a fairly quick and cheerful manner. This will give you an overview.
  • You can then click some of the links. These often take you to further online teaching material -- sometimes a podcast, sometimes a powerpoint or another RLO, but most often a ‘reading guide’, which is a set of notes, a critical summary, taken from published work like journal articles or books. These short summaries can be extended by you tracking down the originals and reading them for yourselves.
  • There are conventional references and book lists on these and other modules.
  • Your tutors will be able to help with more specialist suggestions for further study.
  • Throughout these weeks of predominantly online study, students will be expected to keep in touch with tutors and with each other, electronically, via discussion boards, chat rooms and Google groups, and face to face, via appointments.

Topic One. Weeks 1 and 2

Bodies in modern society. The RLO explains how sociological theory has recently focused on the importance of bodies as outward signs of social processes. An additional sociological themes turns on stigmatisation and how people manage social life with ‘unusual’ bodies. The Leisure Studies material goes on to summarise some ‘applied’ work on topics such as stigmatised bodies or modified bodies ( including tattooed or pierced bodies and cosmetic surgery). The RLO ends with a discussion of obese bodies. Students will be expected to work through the RLO and then specialise in one of the applied areas by following up the links and associated reading.

Topic 2 Weeks 3 and 4

Moral panics. The RLO summarises different approaches to this concept, which offered a way to understand how ‘social opinion’ is mobilised in the media to generate moral campaigns. The concept is associated with some central sociological work on ‘societal reaction’ approaches to understanding deviancy, and with some pioneering work to develop Marxist understandings of the role of the media. In Leisure Studies, the concept has been applied to understand reactions to some spectacular youth cultures, ranging from mods and rockers in the 1960s to rave in the 1990s, and, as the previous work implies, to various health and fitness campaigns as well. As before, students will be expected to work through the whole RLO and then specialise in one of the approaches or debates by following up reading and links

Topic 3 Weeks 5 and 6

Risk. The RLO discusses some of the major approaches in Sociology to debating the pioneering work on ‘risk society’ by Giddens and Beck. Leisure Studies work tends to offer more detailed understandings of the pleasures of risky activities like extreme sports, and there are some insights in to aspects of risk denial or risk management which could have wider sociological implications. The strategy, as before, is to work through the whole RLO and then focus on one particular approach or area.

Week 7

This week we have a day conference, devoted to discussing issues that have arisen during the first six week. Students will work in groups to identify the main issues arising from their work so far. The agenda will include any study problems arising. Group work in the morning sessions will be followed by individual tutorials in the afternoon session.

Topic 4 Weeks 8 and 9

Leisure and enterprise. This series of RLOs discusses the emergence of commercialised leisure by examining approaches which include Ritzer on Macdonaldisation and disenchantment, Du Gay et al on Sony, and Goldman and Papson on Nike. Discussing these topics take us into sociological territory more generally discussions of enterprisesocial and industrial change (including Fordism and globalisation), into studies of consumerism, and into important ways in which viewers are addressed in modern advertising. The learning strategy will be as before. Students will also be asked to write a short account (using guidelines provided) of their own experiences as consumers of fast food, electronic pods, or trainers]

Topic 5 Weeks 10, 11, 12 and 13

Leisure and social stratification. This work is based around two quite large RLOs, this time divided slightly more by specialism. The classically sociological ones examine social mobility, and introduce the main theoretical and empirical approaches. The ones focused on leisure include work showing how leisure activities both reflect and reproduce social divisions of class, gender, age and ethnicity, culminating in a summary of the recent large study by Bennett et al. Students will be expected to work through all the RLOs, as before, although this time they may specialise in either the sociological material or the leisure studies material, again choosing a particular study or approach within their preference.[ RLO on Bennett incomplete].

Week 14 and 15

The module ends with another day conference, and further tutorials