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This paper submits that the hegemonic order in celebrity studies is fixated upon questions of utility, yield and economic asset value. These technical considerations support a technocratic engagement with celebrity that exaggerates the importance of technology and linearity. By the same token, it devalues philosophical perspectives that address questions of Transcendence and Ultimate Meaning. The term 'Triangulation' is introduced to describe the dominant paradigm in celebrity studies. The paper develops the case that to ignore these philosophical issues impoverishes the domain of celebrity studies. The value of these questions is demonstrated by discussing the relevance of Kant's concepts of noumena and noumena, Hegel's account of World Historical Individuals. This material is used to advance the value of phenomenological perspectives, notably the contributions of Bergson and Husserl, in respect of time and space, in the analysis of celebrity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The escalating interest in celebrity studies has not translated into a serious enquiry into the origins of the subject in social and political theory. Instead, celebrity has been usually explained as either the reflection of industrialisation or the expression of timeless, unchanging fate. The result is a distorted, compressed time frame in which the phenomenon is located in unsatisfactory, metaphysical accounts of the position of celebrity in the social order. This paper aims to redress the balance by demonstrating the profound importance ofcultural intermediariesin the social construction of celebrity. I argue that the birth of cultural intermediaries lies in Florentine civic humanism. Machiavelli’sThe Princehas been celebrated as a major contribution to the acquisition and effective management of tyrannical power. There is ample reason to hold this view. At the same time, this interpretation is too limiting. When read from the standpoint of the rise of Florentine civic humanism, the text is also, transparently, a contribution to the successful engineering of renown. More particularly, in this respect, it offers a prototypical understanding of cultural intermediaries. As such, this paper contends that Machiavelli’s study is a seminal contribution to the study of celebrity. Machiavelli formulates impersonal principles on exposure management and the accumulation of attention capital that are presented as the preserve of civil experts. Far from being the high-water mark of tyrannical power,The Princeis evidence of the growth of civic humanism and the ascending importance of expertise in managing fame. The paper aims to revise the boundaries of celebrity studies by demonstrating the canonical significance of Machiavelli’s text. Further, it proposes that cultural intermediaries are seminal in the emergence and development of the fame economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the professional Event Management literature considerable claims have been made for Event Management. Investment in the area and student enrolments has risen dramatically. In some circles, Event Management is portrayed as challenging Leisure Studies and even undermining it. However, if one examines the professional literature, one quickly finds that it is overwhelmingly uncritical and self-congratulatory. The relationship between Events, manipulation, corruption and social control has not been rigorously examined. This paper distinguishes the main types of Global Event (Single Issue and Cyclical). It attempts a balanced account of the claims made by Event Management. It examines data from Live Aid, the FIFA World Cup and the Sydney Olympics to test the claims against practice. It also includes two longer examinations of Global Event Management, namely the Sydney Mardi Gras and the Live 8 (2005) concert. The paper concludes that Event Management is based in principles from neo-liberalism and communitarianism. This produces an attitude to Events and leisure which is Reformist. This perspective is contrasted with the critical tradition in Leisure Studies which supports a more radical perspective on leisure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Music therapy is a vigorous, well-established field of theory and practice. The attribution of healing power to music goes a long way back. However, sinceLive Aid(1985) a new dimension of music therapy has emerged. This pertains to the role played by unqualified music superstars who act as activists and diplomats providing music therapy for mankind. World-renowned celebrities like Sir Bob Geldof, Bono, Sting, Michael Stipe and Madonna transfer the kudos they have won in the field of popular entertainment to produce stateless solutions to global incidents and emergencies, and wider questions of inequality, hunger and injustice. They act as self-appointed global ‘big citizens’. They are unelected and mostly accountable. Yet they have the ear of many elected world leaders and the widespread support of the public. This aggregate tendency is known by the name of celanthropy. It represents a remarkable switch in attention capital from state departments of health, education and foreign aid to celebrity advocates and campaigners. The celebrity big citizen is now the focal point of what might be termed stateless solutions to many global ills. This paper examines the rise of this new relationship between celanthropy and music therapy. It demonstrates the contradictions involved, not least in the matter of trying to live with capitalism, rather than to change the way in which it works as a system of organised inequality and sanctioned injustice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is an attempt to reaffirm the relevance of Marxism for Leisure Studies. It is motivated by the view that the influence of Marxism on the field was late and short lived (primarily through Clarke and Critcher’s bookThe Devil Makes Work(1985)). Marxism in Leisure Studies was rapidly eclipsed by the revival of neo-liberal approaches and the ascent of post-structuralism which privileged ‘discourse’, ‘coding’ and ‘representation’ over economics and class. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the so-called ‘velvet revolution’ in Eastern Europe seemed to expose Marxism as passé and wrong headed. The serious Western economic crisis following the banking collapse (2008) and its effects on employment, work prospects, public investment in welfare, education, health and leisure, together with the persistence of the development gap between the economically advanced countries and the emerging/developing world, and the threat to the environment and society of competitive industrial production, combine (with many other features) to put Marxism back on the agenda. This paper aims to examine the impact of Marxism upon Leisure Studies. It offers a rationale for why this influence was short lived. It moves on to evaluate some aspects of Marxism that are indispensable in the analysis of leisure today. The point is not to claim that Marxism was right all along. More modestly, the purpose of this article is to suggest that flight from Marxism in the field was premature and that, while by no means having all of the answers, Marx and his followers still have much to teach students of leisure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a response by British sociologist Chrisk Rojek to his study which focused on the relations of emotional intelligence and leisure. Rojek states that the concepts of emotional labor and emotional intelligence deal with the organization of credibility and the people's appearance of competence. He mentions that it is possible that emotional labor may lead to volunteer and philanthropic acts.

The article explains the pedagogic and publishing success of the book "The McDonaldization of Society" by George Ritzer. The publishing of the academic book that is a pedagogic success in academic sociology is organized into four categories including research monographs, modular texts and textbooks. The article presents notes on the four categories and the reasons for the success of the book "The McDonaldization of Society" is explained. The article defines public intellectuals as the people possessing special media skills.

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One of the most important concepts in the figurational/process sociological approach is also one of the most under-examined: functional democratization. This refers to the tendency of functional specialization and the division of labour to diminish imbalances in the power balance between groups. The essay discusses the concept and, drawing on Emile Durkheim's concept of ‘egoism’, argues that the rise of celebrity culture provides an important challenge for the concept. The Sports Star is now the object of intense emotional attachment from fans. This exceeds an attachment based upon appreciation of sporting prowess. The leading Sports Stars, in common with the leading celebrities from celebrity culture, are adopted as role models by fans and their lives are followed as parables of normative behaviour. A new term, invasive egoism, is introduced to describe the development of fantasy relationships between the fan and the sports star. Invasive egoism can produce over-close identification between fans and their idols, so that the media representations of the star's life become the fulcrum for measuring changes and moments of significance in the life of the fan. The rise of the Sports Star is related to the onslaught of the commodification of sports culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract. This paper examines the controversy over P2P (Peer To Peer) file exchange in which users have made their record collections available on the internet as a gift relationship. Copyright holders allege that their rights are circumvented by this practice and have encouraged organizations like the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to lobby their case. This has led to the passing ofthe Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) which severely restricts the exchange of intellectual property protected by copyright on the internet. Yet this legislation has manifestly failed to prevent copyright violation. Illegal downloading especially of recordings, but also of film, software and graphic art, has become normalized. Moreover, American Courts have legitimated the practice by ruling against the right of copyright holders to restrict gift relationships through internet exchange. The issue raises the First Amendment legislation which guarantees the right of free speech and innovation. The controversy illustrates that internet browsers may engage in illicit leisure practice merely through seeking to maximize the functionality of their computers and the access offered by the internet. The paper examines the many sides of this controversy and concludes that the copyright holder's case to restrict the practice of the internet gift relationship will almost certainly produce more abuses than gains for civil liberty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines P2P (file sharing) culture as a novel leisure form. P2P raises significant issues about the ownership and control of intellectual and artistic property, access and the regulation of leisure choice. The paper examines the efforts of the recording industry to suppress file‐sharing technology. It examines the limitations on this strategy associated with globalized leisure culture. Following the World Leisure and Recreation Association’s ‘Sao Paulo Declaration’ (1998), it is possible to interpret P2P as a leisure form that fosters social inclusion, empowerment and distributive justice. This leaves the recording industry in the awkward position of seeking both to impose limitations on the functionality of computer exchange technology and to regulate participation in a mass popular cultural and leisure form. The culture of down‐loading is located in relation to the tradition of social banditry. Down‐loading is presented as part of much more long‐standing, deeply rooted traditions of leisure practice in which identity formation and resistance to regimes of power are mediated. Net technology and the corresponding supply of intellectual and artistic property on the net is regarded as weakening the orthodox distinction between licit and illicit consumption and leisure. The paper closes by speculating upon the theoretical implications of these social and cultural developments for the study of leisure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a position paper. It seeks to set a new and distinctive approach to the study of leisure that combines theory, practice and ethics. It stands on the shoulders of 'action sociology', as represented in the Weberian tradition, and symbolic interactionism. But it offers a radical renewal of this perspective by relating action to 'embodiment', 'emplacement', 'location' and 'context', and repositioning leisure studies in relation to 'care for the self' and 'care for the other'. The paper is concerned to elucidate a renewed action approach and to demonstrate its value for the study of leisure. It does not aim to compare or contrast this approach systematically with other positions in the field. The action approach identifies 'testing' to be a duty of all theoretical propositions. It regards leisure to be intrinsically political. The paper distinguishes the differences between postmodernism and the action approach. The paper ends with a suggested research agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the debate on the transformation of society, two theses have emerged which are of central relevance to social thought regarding leisure. First, the post work thesis argues that society is moving into a condition in which the cybernation of labor dramatically reduces the working week and the concomitant notion of the work career. One task of social theory is therefore the review of resource distribution, notably time allocation, in the light of the radically revised demand for labor. The second thesis is that the established institutions of politics, especially party politics, are of declining significance in everyday life and that they are being replaced by life politics, that is, a syncretic, non-party form of social and cultural orientation focusing on issues of lifestyle, environment, and globalization. This article shows the relevance of the life politics and post work arguments for understanding the future of leisure. It examines the concept of civil labor and points to tensions with traditional ideas of leisure. It is a contribution to the debate on leisure policy and the projection of trends in leisure practice. Finally, it concludes that the relationship between leisure and citizenship rights will be of dominant importance in the unfolding debate on the future of leisure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper calls for a revisionist reading of the thesis of the leisure class. Veblen's great work The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) argued that society is ruled by a leisure class. The primary identifying characteristics of this class are prodigious wealth, voluntary abnegation from pecuniary labour and conspicuous consumption. Veblen's argument suggested the decomposition of the work ethic because the characteristics cultivated by the rich would be emulated by the lower orders. Schor's The Overworked American (1991) work suggests that overwork, not leisure is one of the primary identifying characteristics of postwar culture. The article uses statistical and biographical data on the rich today to provide a counterpoint to Veblen's thesis. It is argued that the rich are not characterized by a rejection of work. On the contrary the richest people in the world typically work longer hours than the average. For these individuals work adopts a play form which probably contrasts sharply with wider social experience. Data on the leisure of Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Richard Branson is examined to assemble a position on leisure and the rich which contrasts with the Veblen thesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reviews the 1899 work of Thorstein Veblen, `The Theory of the Leisure Class,' regarding rich people. Public invincibility of the rich; Information on Bill Gates, founder and owner of Microsoft, and Warren Buffett, chief executive officer of Berkshire-Hathaway, two of the richest people in the world; Three developments that have combined to transform the dynamic emulatory conduct of the rich that Veblen failed to anticipate.

Ideology is the central principle of classification in the dominant sociology of comparative education. It occupied an unchallenged a priori status in thought and research. This exaggerates the differences between capitalist and socialist education systems. The two systems do not exist and develop self-referentially. The faults of analysis which treats the two education systems as polarized types are illustrated by juxtaposing it with a world system approach. This is used as the basis of proposing that advanced socialist socities are fully integrated into the capitalist core. Their education systems operate to both subvert and reproduce the characteristic division of power in the world system between core, periphery and semi-periphery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The work of Walter Benjamin has achieved belated recognition in the social sciences as one of the most prescient accounts of modernity. However, it is not generally recognized that Benjamin also provides the first theory of leisure as an inevitably politicized type of activity. By tying the expansion of leisure to the rise of consumer culture and the development of modernity, Benjamin showed why leisure is fated to become beset with conflict. At the root of this is the idea that the increasing reflexivity produced by the growth of leisure time and space exposes the political fetters on leisure experience in capitalist society. In this paper the essential features of Benjamin's analysis as they pertain to understanding and studying leisure are considered. These are taken to be his concepts of modernity, phantasmagoria, aura and flanerie. The meaning of each concept is addressed and related to the wider theme of leisure experience. An attempt to show the value of Benjamin's approach compared with current influential positions in the field of leisure theory is made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author explores the theoretical relations between tourism and citizenship. The author begins with several changes in the structure of tourism that transform the state of affairs, including the growing prominence of tourism in national and international life and the environmental consequences of mass tourism. He also indicates the increase in the number of terrorist incidents involving tourists. In addition, the author explores the dichotomy between the situated citizen and the mobile tourist.

The article introduces the articles in this issue of "Leisure/Loisir." The editors discuss research into the sociology of deviant leisure, which the majority of the articles in this issue address. Among the topics discussed in this issue are: juvenile vehicle theft; strip clubs; binge drinking; gambling among college students; and sadomasochism.