Coming to Terms with Leisure and Globalization

Abstract

This article is concerned with the engagement of leisure studies as an academic field and as organized, professional intervention with the phenomenon of globalization, using the exemplificatory case of the World Leisure and Recreation Association’s (now World Leisure’s) Sao Paulo Declaration on Leisure and Globalization as a point of reference. Deploying a combination of globalization theory and ‘autoethnographic’ research in relation to instances of mediated leisure culture, it reflects on conceptual imprecision and potential contradictions in the Declaration as indicative of wider problems in the disciplinary field. Leisure studies researchers are enjoined to avoid complicity in promoting both dystopian and utopian versions of globalization theory, and sceptically to assess the complex interaction of globalizing and other macro/micro processes. The article concludes by arguing for a wide‐ranging, critically reflexive leisure studies research agenda supported by principled strategic interventions in leisure power relations.

Keywords:

• leisure
• globalization
• research
• intervention
• power

Acknowledgement

This is a substantially modified version of a Keynote Address to the 8th World Leisure Congress, Brisbane, Australia, 17th September 2004.