Sport and recreation in the United Kingdom: flow with the flow or buck the trends?

Abstract

The paper uses sports participation data from the General Household Survey to examine shifts towards more individualized, flexibly timed, fitness-oriented activities. It examines various (often critical) theoretical explanations for these changes in the nature of sports participation- postmodernism, post-Fordism, feminism, time squeeze, increased access to further education- and suggests that policies aimed at sports development need to take account of wider social, economic and cultural influences. It seeks to explore the hypothesis that policy makers, depending on their objectives, might be better to 'flow with the flow' than try to 'buck the trends' of patterns of sports participation.