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Visiting Natural Green Spaces (NGS) is an important lifestyle factor that contributes to quality of life. Whilst NGS can be used to combat health issues, many of which are experienced by South Asian Muslim communities in the UK, it is concerning that such communities face the largest disparities in access to NGS compared to other ethnic minority groups. This paper responds to the paucity in research of South Asian people’s experiences of NGS. Data were generated through individual semi-structured interviews with 20 South Asian Muslim men and women. Using Bourdieu’s concepts of field, habitus and capital, data underwent thematic analysis. This paper reports on the key findings of the study: defining the field of NGS; enhancing wellbeing in NGS; and challenges of accessing NGS. The study concludes that we understand NGS as fields in which capital is shaped by race, religion and gender, and provides suggestions for how policy and practice can consider NGS in health enhancing interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most research on equestrian sports, including horseracing, has been developed in contexts in the Global North. This has led to a narrow perspective of what horseracing is and means in different historical and sociocultural contexts. This paper extends this reach through considering informal horseracing events in Mexico. Based on understanding gender as a 'doing' rather than a 'being', and as an integral part of all social practices and identities, the races are examined as leisure events that function as sites through which masculinities are performed and (re)produced. Drawing on an ethnographic study, the horseracing events are identified as spaces in which male-male interactions provide opportunity for men to perform culturally hegemonic norms of masculinity, against a backdrop of shifting economic and social practices that are affecting wider gender relations in Mexico. Although women also have a presence in horseracing, they play a marginal role within the events which celebrate and foreground male homosociality. Masculinities are performed and validated predominantly through male-male interactions and expressions of male dominance over the horses. This paper thus illustrates the importance of gender to understanding different leisure practices and the significance of social and cultural context to examining leisure generally and equestrian sports specifically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Skateboarding is an informal activity with a relatively low cost of entry, and a range of potential practice grounds. Without formal gatekeepers, it is potentially inclusive on social, economic, and cultural levels. Participation has increased overall in recent years, including by girls and young women, who are increasingly visible in skateboarding organisations, international competition, and media. However, skateboarding spaces remain dominated by white, middle-class, male participants. Why, then, is the increased diversity of participation not diversifying the wider culture of the sport? Furthermore, skateboarding research has not been methodologically innovative, limiting its potential to see what is happening. This paper charts the development of a mapping tool as part of a wider study of young woman skateboarders, designed to better understand how different skateboarders (and others) use, move, and interact within skateboarding spaces. Drawing on behavioural mapping frameworks, we show how our mapping tool developed into a comprehensive, transferable system through which complex, fast moving, leisure settings can be studied. We conclude that being in a space does not always confer full access to participate in it. Examples from our research and consultancy demonstrate how the system can be used to illuminate power relations and interactions within active leisure settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While a growing body of evidence exists around women fans of men's sport, less is known about women fans' perspectives and identities in relation to women's sport, and what is known tends to focus on homogenous representations of sports fans, rather than a diversity of fan types and follower styles. Building on the authors' previous appraisals of the Solheim Cup – the biggest event in women's golf – this paper examines fan performances of women at the 2019 event in Scotland. Twenty-five white women from the UK/Europe were recruited via social media before, during and after the Solheim Cup, with online interviews taking place in the following days. Using performative sports fandom as a framework, the authors seek to examine women fan performances at a major women's sporting event. The analysis of the interviews resulted in three themes around (1) friendship, care and connection, (2) negotiated fan performances and (3) distinctive fan performances. While it must be acknowledged that this is a homogenous group of fans, it is hoped that this research will add to the understanding of the diversity and complexity of fan identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A popular strategy for activating the urban population physically is to provide informal outdoor sport and recreational spaces. However, building an infrastructure does not assure physical activity among the wider population. For instance, girls tend to be underrepresented at public sport places. To create more equal physical activity opportunities in public space, we need to uncover and interpret the barriers. Therefore, outdoor sport and recreational spaces are interesting to examine, as they provide a possibility to understand gender in relation to norms, activity, and public space. The project Equalizer – a tool for equal and inclusive activity places deals with the perspectives of gender, place, and physical activity to create changes in the use of public informal outdoor sport and recreational spaces. This paper aims to discuss the experience-based, participatory method of disturbances used in the Equalizer project and some of the central findings and solutions. The findings indicate that the barriers for engaging in physical activity at informal outdoor sport and recreational spaces are multi-faceted, as are the possible solutions to overcome the barriers and open up the places to more people. We identified four types of solutions based on the identified barriers: spatial/physical, organisational/support-related, activity-related, and norm/representation-related. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic and policy research point to the low participation rate of Muslim women in leisure and physical activities in several Western nations and often linked the issue to their gendered subordination to patriarchal Islamic guidelines. Drawing on 20 semi-structured interviews, online observation and self-directed photography, I challenge this view that Muslim women constitute a homogenous group who withdraw from leisure and sports merely because of religious and gender obligations. This paper aims to explore the ways Muslim women take to (non) participation in aquatic leisure activities (ALA) at the crossroads of their religious, gender, migrant and cultural identities with wider relations of power. Employing cultural geographers' reading of 'intersectionality', this study points to the diverse ways that Muslim women negotiate their multiple identities and the intersecting structures that shape their ALA. This article contributes to further an understanding of religious and cultural diversities among Muslim women. Muslim women's leisure participation as spatial processes constructed through entanglements of religion and gender, with several social identifications including, cultural and migrant identities. The results show that Muslim women's ALA are informed by intersecting power relations operating across different, yet interconnected, scales of Muslim women's bodies, their community, families and wider society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leisure studies have given scant regard to human-animal relations and intersectionality. In this paper, I respond to calls for research analysing leisure as a complex, multispecies phenomenon by exploring human-horse relations and intersectionality in boy's/men's equestrian stories through the concept of intra-activity and creative analytical writing. Thinking and writing through intra-activity brings insights into the co-constitution of humans and horses, as well as the entanglement of other power relations and social categories. The paper illustrates that becoming horseboy(s) is a process of material-discursive intra-activity where boys/men, by transcending the human-animal divide simultaneously transcend the female-male/masculine-feminine divide. Thus, engaging materially with horses can allow and encourage boys/men to be less constrained by dominant gender discourses. The paper also illustrates the importance of studying gender, not as a separate or primary category of privilege or inequality, but as one that is entangled with race, class, sexuality, age and other animals. I finally argue that bringing horses, as well as discourses, into discussions of the enactment of gender in leisure landscapes offers a productive site for elaborating the much-debated question, posed by feminist posthumanists, of the agency of matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foundational scholars delimit drag performance as imprecise and exaggerated imitations of masculinities or femininities in a public forum, usually clubs or bars. The purpose of this paper is to show the ways that performativity operates within a normative (i.e., heavily policed, binary oriented) drag culture (i.e., Kings and Queens). I articulate how the discursive production of gender performance is relational and creates fleeting moments of hegemonic rupture, but, this leisure practice, as with all leisure practices, is both enacted by agentic bodies and heavily informed by the cultural scripts of binary oriented gender. Within this particular drag community, I show how the practice of gender subversive drag has been culturally seized as a weapon of transphobia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I discuss how dance can operate as a method in the collaborative performance ethnography to explore the sensory and emotional dimensions of the embodiment of young womanhood. Drawing on one dance workshop where we explored material objects symbolic of womanhood, particularly introducing Nitika and her intuitive dance with gendered objects and her bodily ways of knowing and learning about gender, I illustrate how dance enabled exploration of young women's identity intertwined with objects and their gendered meanings. I argue that creative embodied methods such as dance create space for working with the plurality of fleeting sensory and emotional information, not because it is more important than any other information, but because it is an alternative way of knowing about oneself, others and the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feminists have long acknowledged that gendered divisions in access to spaces of leisure, and how women and men physically take up that space, reproduce gender inequality. This article will explore how karate practitioners participate in the space of mixed-sex karate practice and how such uses of space de/construct gendered embodiments and a gender hierarchy. Data presented are drawn from nine months of ethnographic emersion within three karate clubs and 15 photo-elicitation interviews with karate participants from the three clubs. The findings of this paper suggest that whilst women often occupied spaces of expertise within the karate hall, gendered distinctions in uses of space emerged in the more subtle ways in which women and men used their voice, responded to the tacit and smelt dilemmas of sweat, and moved their bodies across physical space. This research highlights both the potential of physical leisure practice to 'undo' conventional gendered embodiments that particularly restrict women's intentionality in the world, and the power of spatially attuned research to illuminate the minute ways in which unequal gender relations are naturalised, legitimised and done. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community is often imagined as a space of common beliefs, shared values and/or common purpose. For many individuals of non-normative gender or sexual identity, sports are a means to find and/or develop community. Fostered as spaces of inclusivity and an alternative to heteronormativity and cissexism, sports teams enable and promote a progressive community potential. However, they simultaneously erect overarching boundaries at the expense of some bodies and identities. Based on narratives of 30 diversely identified queer individuals, the authors find that within Canadian queer sports spaces complexities with respect to diverse embodiments – from femme invisibility, racism and trans acceptance, to a preference for androgyny, and fat phobia – ignite uncertainties of community idealism. This paper argues for a re-conceptualisation of community that is based on complexity and struggle, rather than on an assumed unity and, thus privileged safety. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, bodyboarders who surf the breaks of the Illawarra, New South Wales talk about their surfing experiences. We are particularly interested in leisured exclusions. Bodyboarders’ principal concern appears to be territorialisation of surf breaks and the legitimisation of bodyboarding in a sport where they are disavowed a ‘real’ surfing identity based on shortboarders’ desire to claim superiority. The paper explores how bodyboarders’ experiences of pride and shame articulate with understanding of space, self and masculinities. Alongside the physical environment of the surf break, interpersonal relationships between shortboarders and bodyboarders figure heavily in participant’s negotiation and construction of their gendered identities. We argue how individual bodyboarders negotiate the pride/shame nexus has important implication for understanding gender and territorialisation of the surf. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines friendships and social networks in the context of amateur women’s football. Studies of intimacies and friendships tend to situate women’s same-sex friendships around emotional support. The aim of this research seeks to account for more depth in understanding diversity in female friendships. The traditionallymasculine(football) environment is peculiarly distinctive because it contrasts with traditional spaces found in private, domestic context that have traditionally associated with the formation and negotiation of ‘feminine’ friendship identities. Utilising 10 narrative interviews, the paper examines social and friendship networks in two main areas. Firstly, although non-traditional social groupings were evident, it was apparent that some participants had to negotiate a dual private/public role. Secondly, there were friendships based on sociability and these were integral to the connectedness of groups not defined by conventionally gendered roles, defined by emotional ties, but instead on collective interest focused around playing sport. These groupings are of interest because they are contrary to conventionality that frame emotional femininity, and foreground social activities that accentuate cultural complexities rather than confine friendship groups in terms of either masculine or feminine cultural practices. Drawing on the grounded experiences of female football players, we found that female friendships are much more layered and complex than represented in broader cultural discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyses the represented images of men and women in casino ads of Macau, examines the impact of gender power in the casino industry and discusses the social–cultural construction of masculinity and femininity in a culturally diverse context. A social semiotic analysis of a range of casino brochures and leaflets is presented. The analysis reveals that stereotypical portrayals of gender roles persist in Macau’s casino ads, which privilege the male tourist gaze and reproduce the gender power relations within the hetero-patriarchal system. Despite the trend of women’s involvement in public gambling, casino gambling continues to be upheld as a masculine activity in Macau. The study argues that the casino space is constructed through two aspects – the simultaneous masculinisation of gambling and feminisation of interactive service work, which reflect, respectively, the traditional expectations of the gambling culture and the demands of the modern service-intensive casino business. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In post-industrial countries, folk dance may be considered as an embodied performance of a perceived tradition and is representational of values attached to an imagined past. The English Country Dance is one such form of folk dance, having been revived, or re-invented, in the early twentieth century by Cecil Sharp who claimed it to be a national dance of England. However, Sharp re-defined it not as a popular and spontaneous leisure activity but as a serious middle-class art form representing an English sensibility and the virtues of a pre-industrial pastoral collectivism. After the hiatus of the First World War, the English Country Dance continued to offer a resistance to the modern, this time in the form of a burgeoning popular dance culture which embraced urban sophistication and jazz dance. Using the concept of performativity, this paper attempts to demonstrate that the leisure context of the English Country Dance, in terms of spatiality, style, consumption and gender, enabled a continuity of resistance to the modern in a changing socio-cultural environment. The paper draws upon primary research in the archive of the Manchester Branch of the English Folk Dance Society and upon records of contemporary dance in the Mass Observation archive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leisure activities claiming to promote health and fitness have been an increasing feature of contemporary society. The impact of such activities on social inequality is an important area of study for both theoretical and policy reasons. This paper adopts an embodied approach to explore the development of long-distance running and the gendered, aged and classed nature of it. It is based upon part of a study which involved analysing a running magazine which was first entitled Jogging Magazine, quickly became Running and is now known as Runner's World, and ten interviews with runners. The paper illustrates connections between the know/edges, practices, organization and values promoted through running (from 1979-1998) and the growing popularity of a particular bodily type and style. The popularity of the slender muscular body has developed with the growth of leisure-sports like running. It has become the ideal for men and women of all ages, but has been particularly related to the middle-classes. Participation is thought to bring both health and aesthetic benefits for individuals. From the realist perspective adopted the necessary mechanisms of running culture and the forms of embodiment promoted can be viewed as important in constituting class, gender and age processes. I suggest that viewing the emergent powers of sports like running utilising embodied approaches is important because they raise issues around the promotion of leisure activities that are viewed as unproblematically `healthy'. In the case of running it is found that it promotes an embodiment of middle-classness that naturalizes gender and age inequalities whilst also individualising responsibility for them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses ethnographic methods to inquire how new forms of consumption arise as a result of bridging Islamic spirituality with leisure in the newly growing tesettür hotels in Turkey, which have become a magnet of popular and academic attention. We aim to offer a multi-layered analysis of the leisure and consumption practices of Muslim women in the context of the new Islamic hospitality industry by looking at the interactions between spiritual Islam and modern capitalism. We focus on the consumption process of the female customers of these hotels as part of defining and redefining their newly developing identity that is Islamic and spiritual; as well as modern and luxurious. The study responds to the call of Gökarıksel and Secor to analyse new Islamic patterns of consumption and leisure by building on their perspectives bridging neoliberal capitalism and resurgence of Islamic identities. We call for a critical and contextual perspective to understand the dynamic emergence of new forms of Islamic lifestyles and capitalism; emphasising a future agenda of further research that is sensitive to the complexities of desires and leisure activities of veiled Muslim women in diverse countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increased academic attention on the gendering of leisure pastimes in recent years has highlighted the centrality of the gendered body in influencing how leisure is accessed, experienced and transformed. To date, however, little attention has been paid to how women experience aquatic leisure activity, the second most popular form of leisure activity in the UK, and where female participation predominates. This paper presents results from research investigating the aquatic leisure experiences of 22 women, with children aged under 3, in the North-East of England. A number of key themes emerged from the data, which highlighted the centrality of the gendered, lived body as a key social construct contouring participant perceptions in the swimming pool environment. Women reflected upon their self-perceived physical deficiencies when wearing revealing swimming costumes, particularly under the critical gaze of ‘other’ bodies, whether present or imagined. The co-presence of other bodies was also central in shaping lived experiences, and the presence of ‘dependent’ children’s bodies shifted bodily intentionality away from the self towards perceived maternal responsibilities and the management of perceived risks, including ‘dirt’ and ‘germs’ and the negotiation of the tacit rules of the swimming pool. Results also suggest that the emphasis on maternal responsibility in aquatic leisure activity and timing of parent-toddler sessions could lead to reproduction of gender inequalities and the exclusion of some fathers from participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many north-western European countries, the family practices of drinking and eating used to be largely located in the private domain of the home. This situation has recently begun to change, particularly in gentrified urban areas where middle-class families are growing in number and family outings in bars and restaurants are becoming more widespread. This paper examines the new practices of family consumption from two perspectives: the providers and the consumers. Entrepreneurs shape family-friendly spaces by reducing boundaries between eating, drinking and playing and by offering out-of-home pleasures in home-like environments for both parents and children. They balance between accommodating the families and retaining their childless clients. Families that consume in the food and drink spaces are primarily local middle-class families, and fathers and mothers equally participate. This study further reveals that leisure time spent with the family cannot always be classified as leisure time as a family. Parental involvement with the children differs. We distinguish leisured caring time with high parental involvement, own leisure time mainly directed at parents’ personal activities and social leisure time mainly directed at maintaining social relationships beyond the family. We discuss earlier research on the complicated character of family leisure related to the caring duties of parents. Empirical evidence comes from an exploratory study of ten consumption spaces in the inner city of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper focuses on embodied geographies of alcohol to rethink the weekend. We explore the weekend as it is produced via the mutually constitutive relationships between time, space and bodies. Drawing on qualitative research undertaken in Bega, New South Wales, Australia with 23 young women, we offer a critical analysis of how alcohol shapes the bodily, social, spatial and temporal boundaries that interpose knowing the weekend. We illustrate how alcohol mediates the felt and performative dimension of the embodied geographies that configure the weekend. We argue that young women’s bodies and spaces may be understood as sites where the pleasures and pain of alcohol may rupture or make resilient bodily, spatial, social or temporal boundaries through which the weekend makes sense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents data collected from 11 females and explores their gendered and embodied experiences of the martial arts. Our research suggests that through their involvement in the martial arts, women develop physical strength, which leads to individual physical empowerment. Furthermore, the women note their involvement in the martial arts increases their confidence to defend themselves and challenge their gendered embodiment. However, despite acquiring physical strength that challenges their previous forms of gendered embodiment, their experiences remain predominantly at the level of individual empowerment. Thus, the women do not problematise normative views of gendered embodiment which position women as weak and men as strong. Nor do the women in this study question the pressure on females' bodies to be toned and feminine. Drawing predominantly on physical feminism, we question and problematise the concepts of women's empowerment and gendered embodiment through women's experiences of the martial arts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Outdoor nature-based recreation practices provide a window on human/non-human relationships in New Zealand society and for some new immigrants these relationships metaphorically parallel their settlement experiences. This paper draws on the qualitative component of a mixed method study conducted in New Zealand, which focused on participation in outdoor nature-based recreation in national and regional parks. Recent immigrants in New Zealand bring with them environmental values and expectations of what recreational participation in outdoor nature-based settings should and might entail. Recent migrant perceptions of these natural habitats throw into relief assumed givens about the role of national parks and the social and cultural function that these institutions have fulfilled since their inception in New Zealand society. Our research demonstrates that being able to locate one’s self in nature-based settings is central to migrant integration, yet for a significant group of immigrants this is not always possible in New Zealand. This research raises a number of important questions about the nature of leisure and the politics of the environment in New Zealand. In multicultural New Zealand outdoor nature-based recreation, those who participate and those who do not, what they see and what it means to them provides a window on contemporary societal, environmental and cultural politics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Studies of the Sydney Mardi Gras Parade conventionally explore how sexualised subjectivities are debated, enacted, performed and transgressed within the festival time/space. Instead, this paper seeks to understand the cultural politics of emotion generated by this parade in the lives of individuals some 3000 kilometres away in Townsville, Queensland. Drawing on a performative framework, we rely upon the concepts of 'progressive sense of place', 'situated subjectivities' and 'emotional Borderlands'. Narrative analysis reveals sexual subjectivities are actively produced and contested through the different ways bodies, emotions, sexuality and spatiality become entwined within the annual rhythms of this mega-event. The Sydney Mardi Gras Parade beyond Oxford Street signals both a threat to certain situated gay male subjectivities and a productive test to everyday assumptions that naturalise space as heterosexual across a number of geographical scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I explore the power imbued in 'in situ bonding social capital' when on vacation by investigating midlife single women's experiences of eating out alone on holiday. In contrast to much tourism research which envisions eating out together on holiday as carefree and sociable experiences, I consider the company of family and friends as an asset or as in situ bonding social capital. Drawing upon poststructural feminism, emotional geographies and tourism mobilities I demonstrate, on the one hand, the value of this capital by pointing to how lack of the same makes the women feel lonely and socially excluded and, hence, dislike eating out alone on holiday. I argue that this capital is incorporated and affected by the 'normalised discourse' of the vacation. On the other hand, I also identify times and spaces within which this capital is less powerful. On holiday some of the women enjoy eating out at lunchtime and in cities. I thus also argue that the women's emotional reactions to eating places are mobile and that in situ bonding social capital is a temporal-spatial asset. The findings are based on focus group pre- and post-trip interviews and solicited on-trip diaries. Thirty-two Norwegian single women aged 35-55 years participated in the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the notion of serious leisure is critically explored in relation to women's climbing careers and identities. It draws upon findings from an in-depth qualitative study of 19 women climbers and explores the concept of serious leisure from a gender perspective, arguing that in order to develop a more sophisticated understanding of serious leisure, it is important to situate participation in the social, cultural and political contexts that frame experience. Drawing on the theoretical work of Aitchison, Shaw and Wearing, we use a feminist theoretical approach that recognises both collective experiences of gender, focusing on inequality, as well as a post-structuralist engagement with difference and identities. The data identified the central significance of physicality, social relationships and motherhood in the experiences of, and motivations for, the women's participation in climbing as a form of serious leisure. It is argued that understanding the relationship between climbing and the women's wider lives, specifically their work, attitudes to childbearing, sexual relationships, gender identities and motherhood is central to understanding their commitment to climbing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we explore mobile phones as a form of fashion accessory for young women in contemporary culture and the possible value of such fashionable items as a source of identity and self-worth. Despite reliance on the usual stultifying stereotypes produced by marketeers to promote mobile phones, we explore the possibility that increased access to public space generates for adolescent girls alternative choices of leisure experiences and possibilities of multiple enriching identities. The findings suggest that mobile phone use can impart a sense of self-confidence, sexuality and autonomy which defies the male gaze in public spaces and may allow adolescent women to reject traditional images of femininity at a formative stage in the life course and take steps to a further array of leisure choices. It may only be a temporary image that assists a sense of self at a vulnerable time in life, or it may infiltrate other aspects of subjectivity and assist an ongoing sense of self-confidence. However, this particular leisure activity can be seen as enabling, allowing entry to an arena, that of public space, that has hitherto been limited by the male gaze and other stereotypes of adolescent women. Through in-depth interviews with teenage mobile phone users and a review of the literature we have examined the success that this form of technology has had with this social group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the meanings and values attached to grandfatherhood for a range of older men who have recently retired from paid employment. It focuses on the spaces of grandfatherhood and the meanings they attach to time spent with grandchildren. The empirical study involved 12 semi-structured interviews with grandfathers from diverse ethnic backgrounds. The data are examined from a theoretical position that recognises the significance of unequal gender relations within families in determining choice and autonomy and also the potential of leisure in the construction of identities that have the potential to challenge gender expectations and contribute to personal enrichment. This exploratory piece of work demonstrates the tensions, ambivalences and complexities of grandfatherhood for these men. The research suggests questions for future research that take into account differences across ethnicity whilst exploring shifting gender relations within families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of gambling as a form of leisure practice has, to date, received very little attention from sociologists. This is despite the enormous range of consideration recently invested in gambling by policy makers, politicians, journalists, psychologists and economists. In particular, the role that gambling plays as an important part of women’s leisure patterns has been virtually ignored. In this paper, the impact of UK National Lottery play on women’s everyday leisure experiences is examined. A questionnaire was administered to a diverse group of 150 women, and 15 women from this sample volunteered to take part in in‐depth interviews. The questionnaires sought to produce a database of the frequency of lottery play, the types of games played and the amounts of money gambled. The interviews focused on individual experiences, meanings and perceptions of lottery play as a form of leisure. The quantitative and qualitative findings of the research are discussed in terms of the material and ideological constraints shaping women’s everyday experiences of leisure, and also in terms of the ways in which gender and ‘caring’ are reproduced through women’s National Lottery play. It examines the ways in which the lottery addresses a lack of time and space for women’s pursuit of leisure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing popularity of computer gaming and its associated technologies are evidence of the increasing convergence of new technology and leisure practice. The size and popularity of the games industry stands out in contrast to the relative lack of understanding of computer gaming as a serious leisure activity. Previous research on computer gaming has tended to focus on the negative aspects of gaming such as aggression, addiction, and social isolation, rather than viewing it as an activity which forms an important part of many peoples' leisure lifestyles. This paper examines the relationship between gender and the social and spatial organization of computer gaming. The concept of leisure constraints and resistance are utilised to examine the extent to which technologically-mediated leisure activities, such as computer gaming, are part of wider changes in female access to private and public leisure spaces. Computer gaming is still perceived as a highly gendered activity which has the potential to reinforce traditional conceptualizations of masculinity, femininity and associated leisure activities. However, the popularity of domestic and online gaming among females, and the development of female gaming clans, highlights that leisure activities and spaces are becoming less gendered, and can provide sites for resistance to societal notions of the gender appropriateness of leisure activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In current sociological analyses of tourist experience, class, race, ethnicity, age and gender are being incorporated into frameworks which initially assumed that male views of the phenomenon are universal. In this paper we seek to incorporate gender into the fundamental conceptualization of the tourist and the tourist destination. Drawing on concepts from interactionist and poststructural feminist theories we critique the male bias in the conceptualization of the tourist as 'flaneur' and the tourist desination as 'image' for the tourist gaze. A concept of the tourist destination as 'chora', or interactive space is offered. The tourist then becomes a creative, interacting 'choraster' who takes home an experience which impacts on the self in some way. We suggest that such a feminized conceptualization adds a second dimension to the one dimensional perspective which predominates in current sociological analyses of the tourist phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]