A Lefebvrean right to unalienating leisure and citizenship

ABSTRACT

This paper argues for the necessity of reclaiming the ‘right to leisure’ from a Lefebvrean perspective. The right to leisure is an under-studied concept in both human rights and leisure studies literature. While the ‘reductionist’ human rights approaches categorise it as a ‘not so essential’ human right, leisure studies are primarily interested in how inequalities occur in leisure settings within specific societies. Drawing on a Marxist framework, Lefebvre locates leisure in the centre of a new, radical understanding of citizenship which is substantially outlined in his concept of the ‘right to the city’. This article argues that an unalienating form of leisure, which centralises creative agency and qualitative use of time and space, is both a reason and an outcome of the right to the city. In this sense, the emancipatory leisure ideal cannot be separated from an emancipatory notion of citizenship.

KEYWORDS:

• The right to leisure
• citizenship
• right to the city
• Lefebvre

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Only recently, i.e., in the last five years, there is a growing body of literature on leisure as a universal human right. Following Veal’s (2015) article on lack of human rights dimension in leisure literature, two leisure journals published special issues on the leisure as human rights (McGrath, Young, and Adams 2017; Caudwell and McGee 2018) and in April 2020, World Leisure Organisation revised its Charter for Leisure, which was originally adopted in 1970. (For further detail, www.worldleisure.org and/or Veal 2021).

2 Migration, which has been gaining complexity in the last decades, is becoming part of the discussions on citizenship rights. Chau, Pelzelmayer, and Schwiter (2018), for instance, presents how circular migrants, who are care workers, struggle for their right to the city. Additionally, the recent protests of the Berlin Alliance of ‘Wahlrecht für Alle’ (Voting Right for All) demanding the right to vote for more than 700 thousand non-German residents of Berlin in the September 2021 Berlin state election can be an example to such struggles (Citizens for Europe n.d.).

3 Rhythmanalysis is a concept developed by Lefebvre (see Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life, 2013) and it focuses on the ways in which the cyclical and linear rhythms are interwoven in the everyday.

4 As feminist leisure research has displayed in a sophisticated manner the traditional notion of leisure as time free from work has never been the (dominant) form for women due to the gender division of labour (Green, Hebron, and Woodward 1990).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gokben Demirbas

Gokben Demirbas is a postdoctoral researcher in the Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences at Trakya University, Turkey. She holds a PhD degree in Sociology from the University of Glasgow, Scotland. Her research interests include different aspects of the sociology of leisure with a particular focus on gender, everyday life, urban space, youth and citizenship.