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The usual criteria in the studies of work and leisure fail to define the remunerated regional and national (high-level) democratic politician. What does this worker, who in census terminology is 'not elsewhere classified,' mean to the conscientious voter? High-level politicians are not amateurs, for they are paid enough to earn a substantial part, if not all, of a livelihood. Second, these politicians are not liberal professionals. They are paid; they are professional only as all other paid workers are. Weber holds that high-level politicians are guided by one of two ethics: the ethic of responsibility and that of conviction., Author(s): Robert A. Stebbins [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (Aff1) grid.22072.35, 0000 0004 1936 7697, Department of Sociology, University of Calgary, , Calgary, Canada As a sociologist with a long-standing interest in [...]

It is believed that the reigning conceptual model of volunteering in the field of nonprofit sector studies offers a superficial explanation of volunteers' motives encouraging them to altruistically offer their time. Information about volunteering's volitional definition, which roots in sociology and social psychology, is also presented.

In Leisure's Legacy Stebbins [2017. Leisure’s legacy: Challenging the common sense view of free time. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.] explored the nature of the common-sense definition, comparing it with what leisure studies has learned since its inception around 1970. A different tack is taken in the present article, doing so by looking into how common sense has affected thought and research in the social sciences as well as that in professional, administrative and governmental work. The common-sense or popular definition of leisure is “leisure as not work, leisure as fun.” Attention in this article will be limited to the ways that leisure is defined in philosophy and those social sciences that have a theoretic interest in free time. The latter set includes economics, political science, psychology, sociology, geography, and history. A section follows in which the consequences of the leisure-as-not-work image are examined in contemporary higher education, leisure provision, and governmental policy. In conclusion, leisure studies scholars must become proactive and insist wherever called for on correcting the commons-sense view of leisure. The hint that such action is needed should be evident when the conversation or the text leans heaviest on work, with leisure seen as residual and unspecified, as not work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The Aid to Scholarly Publication Programme (ASPP) of the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada (HSSFC) has played a major role in the production of sociological research monographs [...]

The expression concatenated exploration refers at once to a longitudinal research process and the resulting set of field studies that are linked together, as it were, in a chain leading to cumulative, often formal, grounded theory. Concatenated exploratory research is rare in the social sciences (though least so in anthropology), which helps explain why the problem of poor ethnographic memory exists. The goal of this article is to describe the nature of this special kind of continuous research effort, discuss its crucial role in the development of grounded theory, and link it to the problem of memory in ethnographic research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stacking, a form of ethnic segregation peculiar to the world of team sport, is alive and well in the 1990s more than twenty years after its scientific discovery in 1970. Although it has become one of the most widely studied topics in the sociology of American sport, crosscultural data are still extremely rare. Two quantitative comparisons of this nature were made of Canadian and American football in the 1950s and 1960s which, however, are now rather dated and which lack player views on stacking. A new comparison is presented based on qualitative data gathered in 1983 and 1984. It demonstrates that there are dramatically different stacking practices in Canada, practices with implications that pertain to stacking of all kinds and to stacking in internationally expanding American team sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In effect, one of the primary missions of ethnographic research is to explore the lifestyles of the people falling within its purview. Yet, rare indeed it is to find a study in the several disciplines presently conducting such research where this idea serves as the avowed focus of data collection. The concept of lifestyle is first reviewed, then defined with an eye to establishing a generic conception sufficient for guiding ethnographic exploration in a wide range of areas. Next, lifestyle is located theoretically with reference to the concepts of culture, status, status group, subculture, idioculture, everyday life, and social world. The many different types of lifestyles in modem life are then briefly examined. Finally, we consider certain methodological approaches thought to be especially appropriate for exploring lifestyles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the ubiquitous trends in social behavior is the formation of comprehensive systems of interaction known as communities. Everywhere in the world and throughout man's existence on earth, the formation of communities has been evident, from the primitive tribe to the contemporary nation-state. Among the exciting developments within the more complex communities of mankind, such as cities and nations, is the emergence of subcommunity forms which both complement and contest the arrangements of the larger society. Status communities and ethnic communities of many sorts belong among the contemporary sub-communities. It is instructive to apply this concept of sub-community formation to areas of behavior such as the worlds of art and jazz, when that behavior can be shown to approach closure and completeness with respect to a distinctive way of life. This paper deals with two major tasks: (1) the development of a special theory of the jazz community as an unique form of status community, and (2) a judgment as to the validity of referring to the social world of the jazz musician as a community. It should be mentioned that while this formulation is conceived in terms of the jazz subculture, it also has widespread application elsewhere in the area of social deviance. Since the concept of status group has its roots in the general theory of community, we shall briefly outline that concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents several letters to the editor on issues related to sociology. Comment on an article by sociologist John Heeren, published in May 1971 issue of the periodical "The American Sociologist"; Praise of Robert Nisbet's letter on sociological identity published in May 1971 issue of the periodical "The American Sociologist"; Acknowledgement of contribution made by sociologist Kai Erikson, through his views published in the periodical "The American Sociologist," to make sociologists realize, the importance of methods and findings of history for their interests.