This book provides a bottom-up contribution to contemporary political and cultural theory, by presenting leisure activities as a democratic arena.

Where much of the existing literature on leisure and play views participants as consumers, Kjølsrød presents these people as producers, who conduct micro-processes of social protection, become informed and skilled, and achieve influence via complex leisure. Through an in-depth analysis of a range of leisure practices, this book demonstrates where players belong in the political landscapes of modern democracies.

Leisure as Source of Knowledge, Social Resilience and Public Commitment will be of interest to students and scholars of leisure, recreational, and cultural studies, as well as sociologists, anthropologists and political scientists studying identity construction, emerging social worlds, and novel channels of political participation in contemporary society.

Offers a strong theoretical basis, as well as empirical illustration and analysis based on new studies of collectors and collecting, bird-watching, backpacking, role-playing and more; interviews with key informants; biographies and online presentations. Views play as a basis for social relations and knowledge building across national and international boundaries. Analyses why citizens prefer mediated forms of action to the more direct forms that are usually observed in social science research.

Autorentext

Lise Kjølsrød is Professor of Sociology at the University of Oslo, Norway

Inhalt
Chapter 1. The Hidden Democracy. - Chapter 2. Structural Dynamics and Bounding Potential. - Chapter 3. Conceptions of Complex Leisure. - Chapter 4. Collectivity, Poetics and Agency. - Chapter 5. Contingent Activism, Mediated Through Play. - Chapter 6. 'Well, I became very fond of these works and have to touch, stroke and feel - sculptures and everything'. - Chapter 7. 'You can really start birdwatching in your backyard, and from there the sky's the limit'