Complexity and the leisure complex

Abstract

The concept of leisure emerged in modernity as the subordinated ‘other’ of a dominant labour in industrialized societies taking shape as bounded nation states. In late modernity, the notion of a coming ‘leisure society’symbolized a shift in their power balance whereby subordinated labour was foreshadowed as the ‘other’ of a dominant leisure. Leisure studies, while not entirely wedded to the leisure society thesis, developed as an interdisciplinary field dedicated to the recognition of the societal importance of leisure, and commonly as an advisory mechanism for the promotion of socially approved leisure structures and forms. However, in a disconcertingly short time, the conventional framework for understanding and championing leisure became problematic, along with the orthodox rationale for leisure studies itself. Leisure was harder to grasp as its secure location in single societies was increasingly challenged by globalization and transnationalism, and as the boundaries between leisure, commodity consumption, ethical practice and work became progressively blurred. These transformations are frequently described as constituting an emergent complexity that demands a concomitantly complex analytical response that goes beyond the frequently paralysing recognition that the world is, indeed, complex. A critical leisure studies suited to the times is required to do more than engage in a nostalgia-tinged critique of complex developments in the social, cultural, political and economic manifestations of leisure (a hankering for ‘simpler times’) that mirrors their uncritical celebration by those preoccupied with the proliferation of product choice and its associated rhetoric of boundless leisure opportunity (a celebration of today as the ‘best of times’). This paper addresses the complexity turn in leisure by exploring the need both for theoretical and conceptual refinement and for appropriately attuned reflexively oriented empirical research. It is concluded that, to understand leisure in a complex world as a condition of productively intervening in it, leisure theory and method must be no less complex than the object of research.

Keywords:

• leisure
• complexity
• critique

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the conference organizers (especially Ruth Jeanes) for putting on an excellent event, and to apologize to those present for my lamentable performance in the Barefoot Bowls.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

David Rowe, FAHA, is Professor of Cultural Research, Institute for Culture and Society, University of Western Sydney, Australia, and Honorary Professor, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Bath, UK. His research and scholarship focuses mainly on the relationships between popular cultural texts and practices, socio-cultural institutions, and systems of power. His most recent books are Global Media Sport: Flows Forms and Futures (2011); Sport Beyond Television: The Internet, Digital Media and the Rise of Networked Media Sport (with Brett Hutchins, 2012); Digital Media Sport (edited with Brett Hutchins, 2013); Sport, Culture and the Media: The Unruly Trinity (2nd edition, Chinese translation, 2013); and Sport, Public Broadcasting, and Cultural Citizenship (with Jay Scherer, 2014).