Exclusive discourses: leisure studies and disability

Abstract

This article presents an outline of a thesis concerning the ways in which the discourse of leisure studies has become ‘disabled by definition’. Through a failure to engage adequately with disability studies, disability politics and disabled people as both leisure participants and leisure theorists, the subject field of leisure studies has been unable to develop a coherent body of knowledge on disability and leisure. In effect, leisure studies’ engagement with disability has been paralysed by its exclusive discourses, definitions and models drawn from the able‐bodied, mobile and physically active worlds of work, recreation and physical education. These discourses, emanating from the 1960s disciplinary traditions of the sociology of work, geography of outdoor recreation and physical education, have prioritised discourses and definitions of the economically employed, independently mobile, physically able and conventionally aesthetic body, respectively. It is argued here that these three discourses have, in combination, shaped the body politic of leisure studies and a focus on social exclusion which is itself exclusive. In conclusion, the subject field of leisure studies now requires the development of a more inclusive discourse informed by new definitions of leisure and wider engagement with disability research and disabled people.

Keywords:

• disabled
• leisure
• social exclusion
• physical education

Introduction

For more than three decades, the subject field of leisure studies has developed an established discourse on leisure and social exclusion. Indeed, the central axis of the leisure studies canon has come to be recognised as social and public policy addressing the leisure ‘needs’ and experiences of people deemed to be marginal or excluded from leisure provision, participation and consumption. The paradox within this discourse is that disability, disabled people and people with impairments have been rendered largely invisible from research that has focussed on gender, ‘race’ and class as socially excluded identities. The thesis outlined here is that the advances in leisure research addressing these specific identities over the last three decades have been made at the expense of a more holistic theoretical perspective on social exclusion that would also encompass disability (Aitchison, 2003a, 2007; Coalter, 1998, 2001; Collins, 2003; Gramann & Allison, 1999; Green, Hebron, & Woodward, 1990; Rosenblum & Travis, 2008).

This article presents a chronology and critique of leisure studies’ peripheral engagement with disability and disability studies. It seeks to reveal why disability has been ‘disembodied’ from the leisure studies research agenda by examining the ‘codification of knowledge’ within the subject field. This analysis is conducted largely within the context of UK leisure studies although with some reference to North‐American research where there have been tensions between leisure research, informed predominantly by social theory, and therapeutic recreation research which has developed more from a medical intervention perspective. This dichotomy in research approach, which reflects the competing discourses of the social model and the medical model in disability studies, has thus, unwittingly, been played out and reproduced within leisure and recreation research on both sides of the Atlantic.

The thesis presented in relation to the ‘codification of knowledge’ is three‐fold: first, that the disciplinary origins of leisure studies have, by virtue of their theoretical underpinnings and focus of study, failed to take account of disability; secondly, the resulting dominant discourses within leisure studies have failed to provide definitions of leisure which are equally meaningful for non‐disabled and disabled people; and thirdly, the dominance of the medical model within leisure studies and the related field of sports science has hindered the development of critical social theory in relation to leisure and disability.

In disability studies, two explanatory models have dominated the discourse of the last 20 years: the medical model and the social model, with the medical model dominating in the field of sports science (Howe, 2008). This model has been highly influential in developing leisure as a vehicle for the development of the normalised body. This is particularly the case when leisure is defined as an ‘activity’ or ‘sport’ and where the injured body is seen to be disabled and in need of rehabilitation, therapeutic intervention or physiotherapy provided by others and performed on or done to the disabled body. The field of sports therapy is currently one of the fastest growing areas of study and employment in sport within the UK. This follows the USA where there is a well‐established academic field of sports science and therapeutic recreation that seeks to address disability from a medical model and where the discourses of paternalism and triumph over adversity have combined to speak for disabled people (Cowan, 1993; Ferrara & Davis, 1990). This third critique, relating to the dominance of the medical model over the social model, is addressed comprehensively elsewhere and so the focus of this article is on the first two parts of the thesis outlined above (Aitchison, 2003b; Barnes & Mercer, 2004; Davis, 2006; Shakespeare, 2006; Swain & French, 2008; Thomas, 2007).

In relation to the first part of this thesis it is argued here that the leisure studies canon, influenced by its specific disciplinary origins, has produced and reproduced a set of hegemonic discourses in which the body is normalised as economically employed, independently mobile, physically able and conventionally aesthetic. The origins of these discourses, and the ways in which leisure studies has become only partially ‘embodied’, are traced to three distinct disciplinary roots: sociology, geography and physical education. The sociology of work, and its seminal 1960s and 1970s studies of labour and leisure, served to focus attention on manual and physical work and the ways in which leisure was constructed in relation to work, thus marginalising unemployed, partially employed or physically less able bodies (Parker, 1971). The geography of leisure informed studies of urban planning and countryside recreation where the precursor to the recent ‘mobility turn’ in social science emphasised the mobile and independent body (Glyptis, 1991; Patmore, 1972). Physical education and human movement studies, as the predecessors to contemporary sports studies, stressed the value of the physically active, able and aesthetic body (Kirk, 1994). In combination, it is argued here that these three discourses have shaped the body politic of leisure studies and a focus on social exclusion which is itself exclusive.

In relation to the second part of the thesis it is argued that conventional definitions of leisure, largely informed by the three disciplines outlined above, have compounded the marginality of disability from the leisure studies research agenda. Defining leisure has preoccupied leisure scholars since the inception of the subject field but, because it is more often defined residually by what it is not than by what it actually is, leisure remains an elusive concept (Goodale & Godbey, 1989; Haywood, Kew, & Bramham, 1989). Conventional definitions of leisure have focused on when people take part in leisure (leisure time), where leisure participation takes place (leisure spaces), what people do in their leisure (leisure activities), what purpose their leisure serves (leisure function), and the degree to which their leisure is freely chosen (leisure freedom). These definitions, however, provide only a partial explanation of leisure in the lives of many disabled people for whom leisure is not defined by concepts such as ‘when’, ‘where’, ‘what’ or ‘how’ but by ‘who’ they encounter, engage with and interact with as a result of their leisure (Aitchison, 2000).

Leisure and social exclusion: the failure to include disability

The subject field of leisure studies has developed a close association with social policy research and wider concerns of inequality in society (Kay, 2000). Coalter (1997), for example, has referred to the way in which leisure studies has developed a ‘society in leisure’ approach with a focus on the ways in which inequalities in society are reflected in leisure (Coalter, 1997, p. 225). This perspective presents but one side of the double‐edged sword that is leisure. On one side we are able to see the exclusionary nature of leisure mirroring existing exclusion within society. On the other we can view the ways in which leisure, as a cultural site and process, can also be harnessed as a mechanism through which the policy objectives of inclusion and social justice can be pursued.

In a world where difference is increasingly marked by patterns of consumption rather than modes of production; leisure, sport and tourism have become key markers of economic, social and cultural capital formation shaping identities of class, nation, ethnicity, religion, race, gender, age, disability and all of the myriad intersections between these identities. As such, recent leisure‐related research has focussed on how we move beyond marking difference through exclusionary identities, places, policies and practices to making a difference through inclusive ways of knowing and ways of being that shape and are shaped by leisure and cultural policy.

Within the UK, economic poverty, relative deprivation and lack of social and cultural capital inform leisure, sport and tourism participation and non‐participation as they do in most other sectors and services within society. But recognition of the role of leisure, sport and tourism in addressing social exclusion has been slow to be realised within both public policy and academic research. Whilst many other Western European countries have a long tradition of Ministries of Culture, the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport (which includes tourism) is still just over 10 years old and does not enjoy the levels of budget, research funding, prime ministerial support or media attention that other cabinet portfolios benefit from. The Social Exclusion Unit, formed shortly after New Labour first came to power in 1997; this included sport and arts as one of the 18 Policy Action Teams established in an attempt to tackle social exclusion (Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 1999; Social Exclusion Unit, 1998). However, the approach adopted tended to equate exclusion with economic poverty, losing sight of exclusion as a relational rather than a distributive concept and failed to recognise sufficiently that social exclusion can be experienced materially as economic poverty and culturally as prejudice, discrimination, fear and/or hatred of the other (Knight & Brent, 1998; Synder, 2006; Tregaskis, 2004).

Previous research has highlighted the interplay between material and cultural forms of exclusion and the ways in which the material and cultural intersect and interact to form a kind of social–cultural nexus of exclusionary practices and discourses in leisure, sport and tourism (Aitchison, 2003a, 2005a, 2005b, 2009). This and related research has investigated how links between theory and practice create theoretically informed practice or what feminists have previously referred to as ‘praxis’ and how, as Coalter (2004) has suggested, we move from developing cultural services within communities to a more sophisticated position whereby cultural services can be harnessed to develop communities (Coalter, 2004; Stanley, 1990). Thus leisure studies has developed a well‐defined discourse on leisure and social exclusion but has, inadvertently, largely excluded disability from this discourse. This exclusion, it is argued below, is the result of the ‘codification of knowledge’ within a subject field that has been informed by particular disciplinary perspectives with each contributing to the development of a leisure studies canon comprising equally particular definitions of leisure. The term ‘codification of knowledge’ was coined by Spender (1980) who, in her radical feminist critique of gender and knowledge production, emphasised the importance of analysing the knowledge production process and revealing the gender–power relations at work in the production, legitimation and reproduction of knowledge.

In extending Spender’s critique from gender to disability it is possible to see the ways in which leisure studies’ knowledge is ‘codified’ or disciplined to accommodate hegemonic definitions, discourses and models of leisure to the exclusion of those that might better reflect the lived experience of leisure by disabled people. In effect, this codification of leisure studies has resulted in the subject field itself becoming disabled by definition.

The disciplinary origins of leisure studies and the exclusion of disability

During the 1970s three disciplines and subject fields played an important role in the formation of leisure studies in the UK. Each discipline or subject field experienced increasing status within the academy during the 1960s and 1970s and each can be seen in the origins of the Leisure Studies Association, formed in 1975, and the Leisure Studies Journal, founded in 1982. The sociology of work, rural planning and countryside recreation, and physical education and human movement studies were largely responsible for the development of the leisure studies canon. All three areas, however, have left an unwitting legacy from which disability and disabled people appear peripheral. The sociology of work has reified the employed body; urban planning and countryside recreation have emphasised the active body, the mobile body and the sighted body; and physical education and human movement studies have valorised the able body and the orthodox aesthetic body. Consequently, it can be argued that unemployed, disabled, non‐aesthetic, inactive and immobile bodies have been displaced from the conventional leisure studies literature.

The marginalisation of disability from the leisure studies research agenda is, however, anomalous with the growing concern with inequity and social exclusion voiced by leisure scholars in the UK from the 1970s. This growing concern about the exclusion of disability has been acknowledged within sport and physical activity research, although less so within leisure studies research. Moreover, the increasing social theorisation of the body, so evident in sports studies in addition to being visible in sociology, social and cultural geography, cultural studies and gender studies, appears to have gone largely unrecognised in mainstream leisure studies.

The sociology of leisure

Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class (1925) can be highlighted as the first publication in the sociology of leisure. The subject field of ‘leisure studies’, however, really came into being during the 1960s and 1970s with the publication of a number of key texts in the sociology of leisure: de Grazia’s Of Time, Work and Leisure (1962); Dumazadier’s Toward a Society of Leisure (1967) and The Sociology of Leisure (1974); Linder’s The Harried Leisure Class (1970); Parker’s The Future of Work and Leisure (1971); Rapoport and Rapoport’s Leisure and the Family Life Cycle (1975) and Roberts’ Contemporary Society and the Growth of Leisure (1978).

These two decades were significant in laying the foundations for the development of the subject field and setting the parameters for the field of study by concentrating on definitions of leisure, the role of leisure in society and the growth of leisure. On both sides of the Atlantic the leisure studies writings of the 1960s and 1970s were informed by a period of economic growth, increasing consumption and forecasts of an increase in leisure and a decrease in work made possible by technological advances. Examples of this interest in predicting the future of leisure within society are evident in the titles and content of books published at the time such as Bell’s The Coming of Post‐Industrial Society (1973), Toffler’s Future Shock (1971) and The Third Wave (1980), Veal’s The Future of Leisure (1979), Jenkins and Sherman’s The Leisure Shock (1981), Kelly’s Leisure Identities and Interactions (1983) and Parker’s Leisure and Work (1983).

As a sub‐discipline of sociology, the sociology of work shed light on leisure as the corollary of work whilst also demonstrating the ways in which leisure patterns were, to a large extent, shaped by work and employment patterns (Roberts, 1978). Parker (1995, p. 29) was instrumental in theorising the relationships between work and leisure. He devised a simplistic typology of work‐leisure relationships in which he saw: the ‘extension pattern’ or spillover of work into leisure as ‘having leisure activities which are often similar in content to one’s working activities and of no sharp distinction between what is considered as work and what as leisure’; the ‘opposition pattern’ where ‘leisure activities are deliberately unlike work and there is a sharp distinction between what is work and what is leisure’; and the ‘neutrality pattern’ consisting of ‘leisure activities which are generally different from work but not deliberately so, and of appreciating the difference between work and leisure without always defining the one as the absence of the other’. Roberts (1995, p. 42) had earlier emphasised the duality of work and leisure but cautioned against focussing on work at the expense of other influences: ‘To understand leisure we certainly need to recognise the implications of work, but without remaining transfixed within an assumption of work centrality’. Disability, however, remains invisible within these leisure sociologies that were largely shaped by constructs of able‐bodied, full‐time, male employment.

More recently, whilst sociology, cultural sociology, and social and cultural geography have engaged with issues of embodiment and disability this has not been the case within the sociology of leisure. Sociological studies of sport have, however, forged ahead to develop new engagements with social and cultural constructs of the body and disability such that the sociology of sport has emerged as a vibrant sub‐discipline of sports studies no longer hidden in the shadow of leisure studies. Whilst this is positive for sports studies it is less so for leisure studies which has, in recent years, come to resemble the large but now empty Russian doll that has given birth to numerous smaller and now self‐contained sub‐disciplines.

The geography of leisure

The contribution of geography to leisure studies has been documented elsewhere (Aitchison, 1999). Such chronologies have demonstrated that rural planning and countryside recreation provided routes for the discipline of geography to shape leisure studies during the 1970s and 1980s. This also coincided with increasing recognition of the outdoor education movement which provided a bridge between many of the interests of physical educationalists and geographers (Aitchison, MacLeod, & Shaw, 2000). Patmore’s Land and Leisure (1972) and Recreation and Resources (1983), together with the work of influential geographers such as Carlson (1980) and Coppock (1982), went on to shape the geography of leisure as another sub‐field of leisure studies and one that would come to provide a spatial dimension to the social and cultural analyses offered by the sociology of leisure when the new sub‐discipline of social and cultural geography gathered strength in the 1990s. However, disability has been just as invisible from these leisure geographies as it is from the leisure sociologies. In contrast, recent geographical research emanating from the new sub‐discipline of social and cultural geography has engaged more fully with disability (Butler & Parr, 1999; Gleeson, 1999; Kitchen, 2000).

It is perhaps more readily acknowledged that active leisure and sport have presupposed the existence of an able body. But tourism studies too, as another of leisure studies’ Russian dolls, adopts an unsigned non‐disabled hegemonic discourse and assumes an able body to be both mobile and seeing. Indeed, there is a sense in which both mobility and sight are deemed to be prerequisites for engaging with the tourist experience as conventionally constructed by the tourism industry and tourism studies. For example, this emphasis on mobility to sites and ability to see sights is evident in the writings of Urry (1990) who has focused upon ‘touring cultures’ and ‘the tourist gaze’ as signifiers of the importance of mobility and sight within tourism.

Physical education

There is a more established body of literature relating to disability and physical education than disability and leisure, perhaps reflecting the more apparent relationship between embodiment and physical leisure than leisure per se (Arthur & Finch, 1999; DePauw & Gavron, 1995; Health Education Authority, 1998; Hogg & Cavet, 1995; National Coaching Foundation, 1997).

Kirk (1994), following Foucault (1977), has charted the ways in which physical education evolved over the course of the twentieth century to accommodate and reproduce forms of corporeal power that developed from being ‘economically productive and politically acquiescent’ in the era of mass manufacturing industry to being ‘individualised and internalised’ by the end of the century when the body project facilitated by the gym became more widely desirable (Kirk, 1994, p. 165). In spite of the changing shape of physical education throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty‐first it is possible to identity the role of physical education, human movement studies and sport in moulding both the valorised able body and the orthodox aesthetic body, thus excluding the impaired body or disabled body (Turner, 2006).

Gilroy (1989) was an early critic of the lack of engagement between leisure studies and these discourses of the body. But it is only very recently that the potential for disrupting the ‘codification of knowledge’ surrounding the valorised able body and the orthodox aesthetic body has begun to be realised through the images, actions and words of contemporary high profile Paralympians such as Oscar Pistorius in athletics and Eleanor Simmonds in swimming.

Dominant definitions of ‘leisure’: the importance of social interaction

The preoccupation by leisure scholars of defining their subject according to established and normative definitions of leisure has resulted in the two‐fold sense of leisure being ‘disabled by definition’. First, because they are drawn exclusively from the able‐bodied world, the definitions used to understand leisure prevent a full understanding of the relationship between leisure and disability and of disabled people’s experiences of leisure. Secondly, this means that the very discourse of leisure studies is fundamentally flawed in that it does not currently have the linguistic or conceptual awareness or tools through which to fully understand the relationship between leisure and disability or the ways in which leisure is experienced by disabled people. Thus, by definition, the subject field of leisure studies itself has become disabled.

Because it is more often defined residually by what it is not than by what it actually is, leisure remains an elusive concept. Thus, we know that leisure is not usually defined as employment, paid work or essential duties such as childcare and household chores. Although leisure can mean different things to different people at different times or in different places, it is generally agreed that it is the nature and composition of time, space, activity, function and level of freedom that constitute the meaning of leisure for both individuals and society. Commensurate with such a view, and stated previously, conventional definitions of leisure have focused on when people take part in leisure (leisure time), where leisure participation takes place (leisure spaces), what people do in their leisure (leisure activities), what purpose their leisure serves (leisure function), and the degree to which their leisure is freely chosen (leisure freedom). Although contested within the leisure studies literature, these definitions have not been critiqued in relation to disability.

Mainstream leisure studies literature assumes that leisure experiences represent positive choices with leisure frequently being seen as free time, freely chosen time or time free from the constraints of everyday life (de Grazia, 1962). But these definitions may be less meaningful for people whose freedom is relative freedom dependent on the care and support of other people. As the majority of disabled people is not engaged in full‐time paid employment, defining leisure in relation to work is only useful for the minority and simply reinforces the marginal status of those who are not a part of the labour force. Defining leisure in such temporal terms, albeit residual temporal terms, has formed a cornerstone of the leisure studies literature emanating from the sociology of work referred to above.

Conceptualising leisure in spatial terms is central to the leisure studies literature informed by urban planning and countryside recreation. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s the influence of geography was evident in leisure studies but offered little insight into the different ways in which leisure spaces are accessed by disabled people. In recent years, however, social and cultural geographies have begun to address issues of access and mobility in relation to disability and disabled people (Butler & Parr, 1999; Gleeson, 1999; Kitchin, 1998). The recognition that space is both a relative concept and a physical actuality offers valuable insight into the ways in which spaces are accessed and experienced differently by people depending on their disability and/or impairment and society’s approach towards disability, impairment and leisure participation.

Defining leisure as an activity has been central to the dominant discourse of physical education and human movement studies. In both of these fields, leisure pursuits in the form of sport are emphasised whilst physical activities such as walking and gardening, that may be of great physical and psychological benefit to some disabled people, are de‐emphasised. It is only now, largely through Department of Health and Local Health Authority discourses and policies, that physical activity is beginning to be promoted as something quite separate, and with a much wider relevance, than sport and physical education per se. Paradoxically, given the critique of the medical model, it is the medical profession that is now informing the leisure profession and leisure academics of the social and psychological benefits of physical activity and leisure.

Seeing leisure as functional for society or the individual is often associated with the Victorian movement of rational recreation and notions of muscular Christianity through which active and directed leisure were seen to offer opportunities for capitalists to control the time, activity and spatial patterns of the working classes (Clarke & Critcher, 1985). Where leisure is seen as functional for disabled people, it is normally associated with a medical rather than social function. Emphasis on physical activity and physiotherapy thus seems to dominate less physically active leisure or social interaction as leisure (Leach & Bailey, 1995). Defining leisure as freedom may be equally problematic as a number of ‘leisure’ activities may not be freely chosen by disabled people but may be a part of prescribed physiotherapy or recreation regimes requiring facilitation by others. The involvement of other people, however, can serve to redefine some activities as leisure.

My initial disability research was based on an empirical study titled Disability and Social Inclusion: Leisure, Sport and Culture in the Lives of Young Disabled People conducted with Scope, the UK’s largest disability organisation. The study was undertaken following recognition of the limited amount of data and fragmented knowledge base relating to the leisure experiences of young people with cerebral palsy (Aitchison, 2000). The purpose of the research was to provide data, analysis and recommendations to inform future leisure provision and advocacy by Scope and other disability and leisure organisations. The research was undertaken in the south‐west of England and took the form of a regional study in Scope’s West Country Partnership area and aimed to map the place of leisure in the lives of young disabled people aged 11–15 and those who care for them.

The study combined the use of quantitative and qualitative methods in an attempt to generate data that would elicit details of the type, frequency and meaning of leisure. A combination of leisure diaries and focus groups held at a specially organised leisure event in an Exeter hotel was employed. All the young people had cerebral palsy and levels of disability ranging from moderate to severe: more than half of the group used walking aids or wheelchairs; the majority had moderate to severe speech difficulties; and the minority required assistance in writing their leisure diary.

There were four main findings from the research. First, the young disabled people shared many of the same leisure priorities as their non‐disabled counterparts. Secondly, the majority of leisure activities comprised informal everyday leisure with an overwhelming emphasis on electronic leisure media. Thirdly, where patterns of leisure participation differed between disabled and non‐disabled young people was in the amount rather than type of leisure participation and, fourthly, the greatest variation between disabled and non‐disabled leisure experiences was in the social circumstances surrounding participation. This was illustrated by young disabled people’s tendency to participate in leisure on their own or with their parents rather than with friends or siblings. For example, during the course of the two‐week diary‐keeping exercise, the young disabled people averaged only one visit to or from a friend and those in mainstream schools were also more likely to spend break times on their own than with friends. In their leisure diaries the young people recorded activities such as physiotherapy and homework. For example, data from both the diaries and the focus groups informing this article illustrated that, for some young disabled people, physiotherapy was viewed as leisure because it involved social interaction with the physiotherapist in an environment outside the young person’s home. As most of the leisure activities recorded by the young people were home‐based and often very solitary, the novelty of engaging with others was viewed as a highly desirable leisure pursuit.

Indeed the findings demonstrated that, on average, the young people made four times as many visits to physiotherapists as they did to friends during the diary‐keeping period.

For the young disabled people involved in the study, the findings therefore demonstrate that leisure was not defined so much by when they took part (leisure time), what they did (leisure activities) or where their leisure took place (leisure spaces), but by who they encountered and interacted with as part of their leisure. Any sense of freedom derived from leisure may therefore be influenced by and contingent to the extent to which meaningful social interaction is experienced in leisure time, activities and spaces. Such findings raise important questions for leisure provision and highlight the importance of new leisure‐related technologies for providing home‐based virtual social interaction.

The central involvement of disabled people in the research process and project illustrated that an additional definition of leisure as a product of who people engage with in non‐work time is of equal if not greater value than conventional definitions. In other words, the ‘who’ aspect of leisure is as significant as the ‘when’, ‘where’, ‘what’ and ‘how’ of leisure. Thus it is argued here that ‘leisure interaction’ should sit alongside ‘leisure time’, ‘leisure spaces’, ‘leisure activities’, ‘leisure function’ and ‘leisure freedom’ to provide a more comprehensive and inclusive definition of leisure.

Conclusions

This article has highlighted the exclusion of disability and disabled people from discourses and definitions of leisure that have been developed within the subject field of leisure studies. It has drawn attention to the paradox by which disability has been marginalised from a subject field increasingly concerned with wider issues of social exclusion in leisure provision and participation. In particular, the contrast with which disability has remained invisible within leisure studies relative to the social identities of class, gender and ‘race’ has raised questions for future research priorities and agendas within the subject field. Here it is suggested that much greater dialogue between the two subject fields of leisure studies and disability studies needs to be generated and sustained.

A thesis outlining the ways in which leisure studies has become ‘disabled by definition’ was presented in relation to the ‘codification of knowledge’ within the subject field. The thesis presented was three‐fold and each element was addressed in turn. First, that the disciplinary origins of leisure studies emanating from the sociology of work, geography of leisure and physical education have, by virtue of their theoretical underpinnings and focus of study, failed to take account of disability. Secondly, the resulting dominant discourses within leisure studies have been shaped by hegemonic definitions of leisure that largely exclude disability and disabled people and, as such, have failed to provide definitions of leisure which are equally meaningful for disabled and non‐disabled people. Thirdly, the dominance of the medical model over the social model within sport and leisure studies has resulted in particular attitudes to disability becoming dominant within the subject field of leisure studies and has served to marginalise further social and cultural critiques of disability.

The argument made is that by drawing on only particular disciplines, discourses, definitions and models, leisure studies has failed to engage fully with disability studies, disability politics and disabled people. As such the sub‐field of disability leisure is yet to develop in the way that disability sport has evolved as a discrete area of study and practice. To develop such a sub‐field requires not only a revision of our academic practices that produce, legitimate and reproduce particular disciplines, discourses, definitions and models but a complete reworking of our engagement with our research subject and our research participants. By actually listening to and engaging with disabled people it is apparent that previous academic mindsets have excluded ways of knowing, seeing and living in the world that cannot possibly be fully understood without first‐hand experience. It is vital that leisure studies research and researchers begin to embrace the lived experiences of disabled people reflecting progress that has been made by listening to the voices of other groups of people deemed to be under‐represented in leisure and leisure studies. To fail to do so will mean that leisure studies remains disabled by definition.

In summary, this article calls for a more reflexive critique of the role of academic discourse in reproducing dominant, and often exclusive, definitions of leisure so that exclusive discourses and definitions can be challenged in relation to disability as they have been in relation to social class, gender and ‘race’ within leisure studies.

Notes on contributor

Cara Aitchison is Dean of the Faculty of Education and Sport and Professor of Leisure and Tourism Studies at the University of Bedfordshire, UK. Until 2008 she was Professor in Human Geography and Director of the Centre for Leisure, Tourism and Society at the University of the West of England and a member of the Research Assessment Exercise 2008 panel for sport related studies. Her publications include Gender and Leisure: Social and cultural perspectives (Routledge, 2003), Sport and gender identities: Masculinities, femininities and sexualities (Routledge, 2007), Geographies of Muslim identities: Gender, diaspora and belonging (Ashgate, 2007) and Leisure and tourism landscapes: Social and cultural geographies (Routledge, 2001).