Through more than 50 case studies that provide a compelling portrait of leisure in Quebec, this work illustrates that public and civic leisure model that Quebecers use in their recreational pursuits. It presents the model's mission, its values, certain principles, the resources used, the main challenges ahead, and the ways of meeting and working together that enable the model to thrive and develop."
In recent years, recreation scholars and professionals began calling for a return to municipal recreation’s historical roots as a “public good.” Blaming neoliberal ideology for the current pay-per-use model, these calls for a more inclusive recreation system have suggested the sector's "business-like" practices should be of concern because they are in direct opposition to the historic mandate of “equal opportunity.” A central assumption underlying these calls for the recreation profession to return to its “historical roots” is that municipal recreation services, until the late 1980s and early 1990s, were available to all members of society. This narrative is, however, a romanticized account of recreation’s history. In this book, Lisa Tink challenges the often-repeated narrative of a more inclusive and equitable era in recreation’s past. Tracing some of the conditions that have given rise to what she has termed the recreation industrial complex, Tink’s research demonstrates how recreation has, by design, served the interests of white, heterosexual, able-bodied, middle- to upper-class Canadians. By exposing the ways particular bodies came to be centered in a recreation context, the purpose of this important piece of recreation scholarship is to demonstrate how historical inclusions and exclusions (whether intentional or not) were in fact part of a broader biopolitical project intended to sustain white supremacy, with the ultimate goal of encouraging critical dialogues about what is inherently problematic, difficult, and dangerous in the discourses, practices, and policies that govern our contemporary recreation systems.
This landmark publication brings together some of the most perceptive commentators of the present moment to explore core ideas and cutting edge developments in the field of Leisure Studies. It offers important new insights into the dynamics of the transformation of leisure in contemporary societies, tracing the emergent issues at stake in the discipline and examining Leisure Studies’ fundamental connections with cognate disciplines such as Sociology, Cultural Studies, History, Sport Studies and Tourism. This book contains original work from key scholars across the globe, including those working outside the Leisure Studies mainstream. It showcases the state of the art of contemporary Leisure Studies, covering key topics and key thinkers from the psychology of leisure to leisure policy, from Bourdieu to Baudrillard, and suggests that leisure in the 21st century should be understood as centring on a new ‘Big Seven’ (holidays, drink, drugs, sex, gambling, TV and shopping). No other book has gone as far in redefining the identity of the discipline of Leisure Studies, or in suggesting how the substantive ideas of Leisure Studies need to be rethought. The Routledge Handbook of Leisure Studies should therefore be the intellectual guide of first choice for all scholars, academics, researchers and students working in this subject area.
