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This book analyses the concept of community by critically exploring its many manifestations in leisure. It unpacks patterns of mutuality, collective expression, and belonging as they emerge through interaction, shared narrative, and practice.
Recognizing that our experiences of "being in common" and "being in leisure" require rethinking in a changed modernity, the book illustrates the myriad ways that leisure communities take form and shape in the current economic, political, and ideological moment. It highlights how changing societal expectations, economic conditions, technological innovations, and ideological shifts set the stage for a reformulation of social relations and emergence of new leisure-based social groupings. The authors question how to make sense of new social expressions, at times offering unexpected and completely new ways of theorizing community.
Global in richness and scope, the book offers a rich and composite view regarding how to take up and theorize leisure in relation to the multiple dimensions of community. It will inspire a new generation of readers in a broad range of areas across the social sciences, including sociology, community studies, leisure studies, and planning.
List of contents
Introduction: Are Leisure Communities Really Communities?, Part I: Locating Community in 21st Century Leisure, 1. The Enduring Relevance of Third Places, 2. Forging Connections and Community Within an Online Tennis Forum, 3. Friendships in the Singlehood: Examining Leisure and Community for Single Adult Women, 4. Unpacking the Impact of Social Relationships on the Leisure Mobility of Millennials, 5. Twitch.tv as a Vibrant Networked Community of Loose Affiliations, 6. Community as Hyperobject: Exploring the “Spectral Plains” of Leisure, Part II: Community and Playful Performance, 7. Urban Exploration and its Heterotopic “Communities”, 8. Placemaking in the Playful City: Playing In and Playing With the Urban Environment, 9. Better Singers Together: How Older Japanese Women Build and Maintain Social Relations in Karaoke Classrooms, 10. Together Apart: Second Home Leisure Communities in New Zealand, 11. Performing Community: A Case Study of the Yoga Experiences of Rural New Zealand Men, 12. Parisite Lost: The Utopian Decline of a DIY Skatepark, Part III: Leisure Communities and Their Impacts, 13. Pipe-dreams and Utopian Visions: Blending Community and High Performance Sport in New Zealand Cycling and Gymnastics, 14. Inside Out: The Role(s) of Leisure in the Endogenous and Exogenous Pathways to Social Capital, 15. Community Sport and Civic Engagement, 16. Envisioning Museums as Welcoming Spaces for Belonging, 17. Resisting, Reproducing, and Recreating Rurality: Leisure in Contemporary Rural Communities
About the author
Troy D. Glover is Professor in the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies and Director of the Healthy Communities Research Network at the University of Waterloo, Canada.
Erin K. Sharpe is Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies at Brock University, Canada.
Summary
This book analyses the concept of community by critically exploring its many manifestations in leisure. It unpacks patterns of mutuality, collective expression and belonging as they emerge through interaction, shared narrative, and practice.
