1st Edition
Leisure Communities Rethinking Mutuality, Collective Identity and Belonging in the New Century
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.
Introduction: Are Leisure Communities Really Communities?
Troy D. Glover and Erin K. Sharpe
Part I: Locating Community in 21st Century Leisure
1 The Enduring Relevance of Third Places
Bradley H. Camp and Rudy Dunlap
2 Forging Connections and Community Within an Online Tennis Forum
Nadina Ayer and Ron McCarville
3 Friendships in the Singlehood: Examining Leisure and Community for Single Adult Women
Janet K. L. McKeown
4 Unpacking the Impact of Social Relationships on the Leisure Mobility of Millennials
Lan Le Diem Tran, Nicole Vaugeois, and Vincent Kaufmann
5 Twitch.tv as a Vibrant Networked Community of Loose Affiliations
Bradley Robinson and Nicholas A. Holt
6 Community as Hyperobject: Exploring the “Spectral Plains” of Leisure
Jack Black and Jim Cherrington
Part II: Community and Playful Performance
7 Urban Exploration and its Heterotopic “Communities”
Kevin Bingham
8 Placemaking in the Playful City: Playing In and Playing With the Urban Environment
Erin K. Sharpe and Troy D. Glover
9 Better Singers Together: How Older Japanese Women Build and Maintain Social Relations in Karaoke Classrooms
Benny (Koon Fung) Tong
10 Together Apart: Second Home Leisure Communities in New Zealand
Trudie Walters
11 Performing Community: A Case Study of the Yoga Experiences of Rural New Zealand Men
Stephen Parker and Mike Boyes
12 Parisite Lost: The Utopian Decline of a DIY Skatepark
Benjamin A. Shirtcliff
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
Damion Sturm, Roslyn Kerr, Robert E. Rinehart and Seònaid Espiner
14 Inside Out: The Role(s) of Leisure in the Endogenous and Exogenous Pathways to Social Capital
Troy D. Glover, Julian F. P. Macnaughton and Steven E. Mock
15 Community Sport and Civic Engagement
Katie E. Misener and Dawn E. Trussell
16 Envisioning Museums as Welcoming Spaces for Belonging
Darla Fortune
17 Resisting, Reproducing, and Recreating Rurality: Leisure in Contemporary Rural Communities
Kyle A. Rich and Laura Misener
Biography
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.
