Search

Veal's concerns about lifestyle (p. 9), as served up in the I Synthesis i , are considered to some extent in Stebbins ([9]), a book devoted exclusively to leisure lifestyles. The richest discussion of casual leisure as well as its relationship to common sense is available in Stebbins ([6]), another important book that Veal ignored. Turning next to the short section on classification (pp. 2-3), Veal's concern here about the CL-SL continuum is tackled in all its complexity in Stebbins ([5]), which unfortunately, is not in Veal's reference list. Keywords: Serious leisure; casual leisure; social world; macro-level analysis EN Serious leisure casual leisure social world macro-level analysis 590 593 4 07/27/21 20210801 NES 210801 Veal ([11]) has just published a critique of the serious leisure perspective (SLP), and this article is a rejoinder to his observations. [Extracted from the article]

The serious leisure perspective offers a panoramic view of the many different kinds of free-time activities found in modern society, describes their origin and appeal, and explains the different rewards gained by pursuing them. The Perspective also shows how these activities fit in the local community and wider society. Broadly classified as serious, casual, and project-based leisure, they offer different solutions to three key problems in therapeutic recreation (TR). They are (1) to know which kind of leisure to recommend or suggest to people with a particular disability; (2) to come to grips with the still dominant public view that real personal worth is measured according to the work people do; (3) to help offset among the large majority of practitioners the lack of a theory of leisure. The problems are considered first and then the serious leisure perspective is applied as a solution to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leaving an academic post by retiring (from teaching, research, academic administration) is to leave in later life a main, wider-community social involvement. Retirement from this occupational heaven can lead to an incongruous lifestyle, however, to a lonely, unsettling existence, even with compatible spouse, family, and close friends near at hand. For they cannot usually offer the values of academia. They fail to generate the feeling of being part of the larger community, of being somebody within it. There are three ways to recover this loss, each realized in leisure time, namely, serious leisure, casual leisure, and project-based leisure. Informal community social involvement refers to informal involvements of a fortnightly or monthly nature. Irregular community social involvement consists of local formal involvements that are pursued from time to time. Regular community social involvement refers to membership and steady member participation in local and extra-local formal organizations. For academic retirees in search of community involvement, becoming immersed in the social world of a serious leisure activity is possibly the most effective way to establish beyond the circle of one's intimates just who one is. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Positive psychology and the study of leisure of leisure have more in common than meets the eye. Their shared ground is especially evident in the concept of leisure activity: a type of pursuit, wherein participants in it mentally or physically (often both) think or do something, motivated by the hope of achieving a desired end. Leisure activities are positive activities, identified psychologically by particular sets of behaviors and sociologically by their place in a leisure social world and often in a social institution (e.g. sport, art, entertainment). Leisure is defined and the concept of leisure experience examined. Next, the serious leisure perspective is introduced. The main part of the article explores the emotions of leisure experience in interpersonal relationships, contemplation/spirituality, volunteering, quality of life/well-being, happiness, and play and creativity. The serious pursuits offer the richest range of positive psychological states, but casual and project-based leisure are not to be ignored. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Activities such as gardening are fast becoming acknowledged as a much desired health management strategy in later life. However, few studies have examined gardening as aseriousleisure pursuit. The aim of this study was to apply the concept of serious leisure to the context of leisure gardening by older adults in Australia. Casual, participant and devotee gardeners were compared with respect to the relative importance of the characteristics of serious leisure, using self-administered questionnaires (n = 514). Findings indicated that characteristics of serious leisure varied significantly across the three groups. The most powerful discriminating characteristics were Identity, Unique Ethos and Significant Effort; with Identity particularly important for devotee gardeners. The deeper the level of engagement, the more gardening was perceived as contributing to overall life satisfaction. Findings indicated that gardening could be a serious leisure pursuit that assists in the development of a positive leisure identity and contributes to a more mobile and active life for older adults. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Education gained through leisure activities plays a central role in our search for self-fulfillment, be the leisure activity a project or a serious pursuit. After discussing the serious leisure perspective, education, both formal and informal, is explored for its special contribution to fostering fulfillment, defined as the realization of personal tastes, talents, and potential. Several key concepts marking the road to fulfillment are discussed: life course, process, leisure education, adult education, self-directed learning, and experience. The ways that acquired education as background knowledge is applied constitute a crucial step in finding self-fulfillment in an activity. The role of Internet and digital technology is also examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concerted singing is a common amateur activity in many parts of the world. Such singing is at minimum two-part vocal harmony with or without accompaniment, which may, however, be carried out in groups of 150 voices or larger. It ranges from informal gatherings of 2 to 4 people (male, female and both) who come together to sing their favourite songs or hymns with or without accompaniment to large community formations such as the barbershop and symphony choruses. Despite the widespread popular interest in this kind of activity, research on it as leisure outside that on barbershop singing is nonexistent. The concept of institutional chorus is developed and set in the serious leisure perspective. Interview data from a qualitative study of a Chinese university faculty chorus are then analysed and presented according to six concepts: career, social world, constraints and facilitators, costs, benefits, and rewards. Concerted singing in an institutional chorus, this exploratory study suggests, meets the six qualities of a serious pursuit. This kind of singing was found to be a deeply rewarding activity for its participants. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Dabbling is casual leisure, a hedonic activity common in music as well as in a number of other free-time interests. In the past, dabbling has been inadequately conceptualized, one result being some misunderstanding about its nature and its contribution to leisure and even to professional work. By way of clarification we look first at the contemporary explanation of dabbling as set out according to the serious leisure perspective, a main analytic framework in the field of leisure studies. This explanation proceeds from two related articles written by Gates and Jorgensen. Next, dabbling as a leisure activity in music is considered in detail, particularly as it relates to children. This includes an examination of its nature and its role in initiating a leisure/work career in music, as experienced in the passage from dabbler to neophyte amateur and on possibly to professional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The definition of volunteering as unpaid work has been around far longer than that of volunteering as leisure. The former, which is the more widely used of the two, seems at first blush to be incompatible on several accounts with the latter. And in fact there are some incompatibilities, which however, can be reconciled in an overarching definition incorporating both. This article shows that, among its other defining features, volunteering is both unpaid work and attractive leisure. No attempt is made to provide a full definition of volunteering, an impossibility given the present incomplete state of research on this question. Rather the aim is more modest: to show how work and leisure, seen as falling along a single complex axis, can be combined to form part of a full definition thereby giving us a deeper understanding of their relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examinations of the self and leisure are uncommon, not to mention those bearing on leisure and the semiotic self. The goal of this article is to help correct this deficiency. To this end, the serious leisure perspective is presented, followed by a discussion of how it is related to the semiotic self as formulated by Norbert Wiley. The principal vehicle by which this is accomplished is by way of the meaning of leisure. Moreover participants in serious leisure find there a powerfully attractive leisure career, an experience that is unavailable in the other two forms: casual and project-based leisure. This career frames the development of the semiotic self through leisure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are times when researchers want to examine sizeable set of leisure activities, often those pursued by a particular demographic category or those grouped according a particular theoretic classification. Yet, conventional qualitative methods are poorly suited to gathering the broad range of data they require for this purpose. These methods are too labour-intensive, while quantitative surveys, if they are to be effective, are limited to known populations which can be properly sampled. But the need to gather data on sets of leisure activities persists; for considering all the leisure activities pursued in the world today, we have some, not even full, ethnographic knowledge of only a very small proportion. One way to solve this problem is through exploratory Internet data collection (EIDC): searching the Internet for exploratory qualitative data on large sets of leisure activities. The nature of the data found on the Internet and the sources there in which these data may be found are discussed. The Internet can be a rich source of descriptive, ethnographic, data. The advantages and disadvantages of EIDC are considered. Nine types of Internet data are set out. The issues of ethics and author copyright are also addressed. Most of the information gathered through EIDC is unavailable elsewhere, or available only in very limited fashion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Being motivated to volunteer is a crucial condition for both the volunteers and those seeking their services. Yet the reigning conceptual model of volunteering in the field of nonprofit sector studies—an economic one based on the idea that the first may be defined as people engaged in unpaid labor—offers at best a superficial explanation of the motives encouraging them to altruistically offer their time. In light of this conceptual deficiency another definition of volunteering (and hence volunteer) has, of late, been gaining acceptance. Sometimes referred to as a volitional definition, it roots in sociology and social psychology: volunteers feel they are engaging in a leisure activity, which they have had the option to accept or reject on their own terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The serious leisure perspective is introduced and its relationship to library and information science (LIS) set Out. The relationship is twofold: the perspective offers a distinctive approach both to research and to practice in this discipline. That is, the perspective bridges a critical gap that has separated the fields of US and leisure studies, manifested in both as scant concern with the central interest of the other. This gap is bridged by providing the first with a conceptual framework for understanding leisure and leisure activities, which can help guide researchers and practitioners working on the retrieval and dissemination of information bearing on such activities. The serious leisure perspective is the theoretic structure that synthesizes three main forms of leisure. Serious leisure is the systematic pursuit of an amateur, hobbyist, or volunteer core activity that captivates the participant with its challenges and complexity. Casual leisure is an immediately, intrinsically rewarding, relatively short-lived pleasurable core activity, requiring little or no special training to enjoy it. Project-based leisure refers to a short term, reasonably complicated, one-shot or occasional, though infrequent, creative undertaking carried out in free time. Serious leisure is the most complex of these three, offering thereby the richest lode for LIS researchers and practitioners to mine. The perspective is a vehicle for systematically exploring people's use and dissemination of information during free time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leisure as a tool for rehabilitating people with neuro-disabilities is well established. Yet, despite significant progress in this area, problems remain in the way leisure is used for this purpose. One, as yet, unresolved problem is how to determine which leisure activity or activities will be attractive to people with particular disabilities. Another is how to counteract the persistent, dominant public view that real personal worth is measured according to the work people do rather than the leisure they pursue. The third is to inform practitioners, many of whom are unaware of recent advances in leisure theory, about these advances, which can help them solve the first problem and adapt to the second. The main body of this paper presents such a theory – the serious leisure perspective. It synthesizes three main forms of leisure, showing, at once, their distinctive features, similarities, and interrelationships. The forms are serious, casual, and project-based leisure. A review of the research on neuro-rehabilitation follows. Some implications of the Perspective for neuro-rehabilitation are then presented, including ways practitioners can introduce clients to certain types of leisure, encourage them to pursue the types chosen, and help them develop an optimal leisure lifestyle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Project-based leisure is a short-term, moderately complicated, one-shot 1 or occasional though infrequent, creative undertaking carried out in free time. It requires considerable planning, effort and sometimes skill or knowledge, but is for all that neither serious leisure nor intended to develop into such. Nothing has been written about project-based leisure per se, even though it appears to be widely pursued wherever people have sufficient free time and resources for it. The object here is to present a conceptual framework detailed enough to focus inquiry, but at the same time open-ended enough to permit and encourage effective and extensive exploration of this (theoretically) new form. Among those likely to engage in project-based leisure are people with heavy workloads; homemakers, mothers and fathers with extensive domestic responsibilities; and unemployed individuals who, though looking for work, still have time at the moment for (mostly one-shot) projects. In the Conclusion, project-based leisure is discussed as a form of leisure experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the cost and benefits of hedonism. Consequences of taking casual leisure; Definition of casual leisure; Types of casual leisure.

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 in Canada. Here the Programme is analysed and assessed for the magnitude and significance of participation in it by Canadian sociologists. Also highlighted are subsidized books of special importance; they constitute evidence of the critical role the Programme plays in developing Canadian sociology and advancing knowledge of key aspects of Canadian society. This leads to consideration of the future of monograph publishing in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the criteria for distinguishing serious leisure. Serious leisure can serve as an effective non-remunerative substitute for work in the Information Age for those who find they have too little of it. First, consider again the concept of social world. It is not only an idea well in tune with the work and leisure routines of the present and future, it is also a desideratum of many a modern man and woman both for today and for many years to come. Increasingly, it appears that the only available communal connections for most people will come through activities taking place in their after-work time. Yet, because they tend to be private, purely family activities rarely generate such connections. But those who once found meaningful organizational ties at work can still turn to serious leisure, where one of the principal attractions of most of the amateur, hobbyist, and volunteer activities is the sense of being part of a bustling, fascinating, all-encompassing social world. For many enthusiasts this involvement is as exciting as the central activity itself and, in career volunteer work, often indistinguishable from it.

Professionals have long been known for the special orientation they hold toward their work. This orientation, which may or may not be shared by the majority of the members of a given profession, reaches its broadest expression in a common outlook referred to here as the "spirit of professional work." This work is highly complicated, executed most effectively by practitioners with many years of training and experience. Additionally, the spirit of professional work pervades the work lives of a sufficient number of employed professionals to constitute an important part of their occupational subculture. But even the professional's work life is not uniformly rosy. The excitement of professional work stands out in relief against the boring, mundane tasks also required there from time to time. This article centers not on this dissatisfied segment, however, but on those professionals, whatever their proportion in their profession, for whom the spirit of their work seems to be so powerful that they search for its equivalent in their extraprofessional lives. For this remarkable, albeit relatively rare, orientation is found only in certain kinds of work and, as becomes evident, its equivalent is found only in certain kinds of leisure.

Since 1982, the year the serious leisure perspective was first set out, the concept of casual leisure has served mostly as a foil for sharpening understanding of that framework. Yet casual leisure is a distinctive activity in itself and an important part of the contemporary leisure scene, suggesting that it, too, should be conceptually elaborated just as serious leisure was earlier. Thus the principal goal of this article is to present a theoretical statement defining casual leisure as a separate field demarcated by its own special properties. To this end, a definition of casual leisure is presented after which its six types are described. This is followed by a section on hedonism and other rewards and one on deviant leisure, both casual and serious. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Other sciences among them history, archaeology mineralogy, ornithology astronomy and entomology, have profited greatly from their vigorous amateur wings, which have existed along side of and sometimes preexisted the now dominant profession. The greatest single contribution of amateur science societies to their associated professions is the collection and dissemination of descriptive data. Intensive research on two of these amateur sciences and examination of the descriptive-historical literature of all six suggest that we ought to think seriously about promoting an amateur sociology. After a description of avocational science in general, a proposal for an amateur sociology is presented using the avocational developments in the other sciences as a model. [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]

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]

This study centered around the following two research interests: (1) What is the position of the jazz musician in the larger society? (2) To what extent do jazz musicians tend to form into communities of their own? After having developed a theory of the jazz community, six hypotheses were derived and tested by means of an ex-post-facto study design. It was predicted that jazz musicians would rank lower than commercial musicians on the major social dimensions of class, status, and power in the wider community and higher than commercial musicians on these same dimensions within the jazz community. In general, this study confirmed these hypotheses on a single population of jazz and commercial musicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Physical exercise is an activity whose health-related benefits have been promoted by health professionals and social institutions. However, given that the levels of practice are not ideal, the subjective variables - that give meaning, provide continuity and may increase exercise adherence - need to be studied in depth. In this sense, fitness training is analyzed as a form of serious leisure, a body-centered hobby - a way to practice and relate to the activity that leads its practitioners to adhere more to it, orienting them towards a career in acquiring and expressing skills, knowledge and experience. In total, 1,134 people (588 men, 546 women) doing fitness training, aged between 18 and 70 years old (M = 34.7, SD = 13.06), answered a questionnaire about time dedicated to exercise as serious leisure and its derived and complementary benefits. Student's t Coefficient and ANOVA were used to show the significance of the differences among the scores obtained for the rewards related to exercise and the other variables of the study. The results highlight that exercise as serious leisure is an activity whose weekly time investment makes it to acquire a central role when rewarded by sense of accomplishment, contact with others, improved health and being outdoors with the family. To conclude, this study enhances that characterizing fitness training as a body-centered hobby - which shares the principles of serious leisure - implies a new approach to the analysis of exercise while also suggesting new ways of promoting it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents Robert A. Stebbins' reaction to several comments on his paper which appeared in a previous issue of The American Sociologist, which provided an account of professional and amateur sociology in the U.S. Stebbins states that he wishes only to offer a single clarification of a poorly communicated passage that caught Althauser's attention. It concerns the four conditions that encourage the emergence and persistence of an avocational interest in science. According to Stebbins, when he wrote the passage, he had Kuhn's concept of normal science in mind. Amateurism takes root in those sciences or areas of sciences that lack a dominant paradigm as the exclusive grade to scholarly research. These fields are in a preparadigm stage of development in which several schools of thought compete. Why then, is there no amateur sociology? Among the answers to this question, according to Stebbins, are that sociologists lack a tradition of amateurism, a vision that amateurs could help professionals with some of their research interests, and a willingness to organize nonprofessional assistance on any basis other than temporary. The same conclusions could likely be reached for other sciences.

The world’s population is ageing. Engagement in physical activities that assist people to age in good health while enjoying quality of life are critical considerations for practitioners and policy-makers. In 1913, the sport of Rugby Union was introduced to Taiwan. As a form of recreational activity, the game became popular among- Taiwanese males. In recent years, older players have sought to facilitate their continued involvement in an activity that is normally played as a full-contact sport. Why these individuals continue to play, how they perceive their experience and how the sport has evolved to maintain their interest and active involvement are especially interesting to explore. Study participants were specifically chosen from an established Taiwanese rugby union club. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted in 2013 with 15 amateur rugby players aged from 54 to 83 years. Results indicated that the main motivations for participants to continue playing was that it gave them ‘a sense of nostalgia and pride’, ‘lifelong friendship and belonging’, ‘pure joy and passion’, with considerations of being ‘mentally and physically active’, keeping up an involvement in ‘a real man’s sport’ and maintaining a sense of one’s ‘self-identity’ with ‘responsibility and commitment’ towards this chosen sport. Findings suggest that leisure providers need to be aware of the opportunities for reducing constraints and providing adaptations that allow older adults to immerse themselves in physically active pursuits integral to enjoying a fruitful ageing journey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to explore the serious leisure to devotee work (SL-DW) transformation trajectory in the case of yoga. An in-depth semistructured interview was conducted with 15 serious yoga practitioners to examine career change and the relationships between leisure and work. The findings of the research outline the passage from stepping into casual yoga leisure, moving from casual to serious yoga leisure, aspiring to succeed on the professional level, becoming an occupational devotee and finally a possible return to the serious-leisure state. A grounded theoretic model emerges explaining the blurred relationships between leisure and work, and the intertwined, dynamic and interactive nature serving as both the antecedent to and consequence of each other. This study theoretically contributes to deepening serious leisure career, the leisure-work relationships and the Serious Leisure Perspective. Meanwhile, it has practical implications for understanding and policy making for other emerging, leisure-oriented kinds of work in the new era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the choice and pursuit of adolescents' most important and interesting leisure activity. It is underpinned by the concept of serious leisure, recent perceptions of seriousness as a continuum and calls for incorporating contextual elements of serious activity pursuit. A questionnaire survey was administered to 832 students from 10 secondary schools in Hong Kong. Students were asked to nominate leisure activity that they regarded as most important and interesting as well as to complete an adapted version of the Serious Leisure Inventory and Measure (SLIM). Results showed the popularity of sports and performance and graphic arts activities and of psychological reasons for activity choice. There were variations in activity choice between boys and girls and across schools as well as across levels of seriousness in activity pursuit. The study adds to the scant knowledge of adolescents' serious leisure and enhances understanding of motives for and meanings of serious engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]