Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture

Higher Education Academy Network for Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism
Resource Guide in:
Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture
INTR
ODUCTION
It is clear that contemporary leisure often involves activities such as adventure and risktaking, eating fast food, visiting heritage sites and theme parks, downloading pornography, or taking illegal drugs (with or without accompanying clubbing). Many of these activities in turn involve the consumption of commercially provided goods and services, which offer the usual dilemmas of choice and freedom, commercial agendas and personal uses. The topics can be used to examine leisure studies critically, and to focus on real-life complexities, including ethical dilemmas. These activities can usefully be developed to introduce the topic to undergraduates so they can practice and experience some of the academic debates and techniques in the field. Students will often be able to bring with them personal experiences which exceed those of lecturers, and thus can make a genuine contribution to a critical debate, both using experience to test theories, and theories to extend experience. Leisure experiences of this kind are widely studied and discussed in a range of academic journals and traditions, but leisure studies offers a more fruitful tradition of academic work to study these areas than do either the traditional social science disciplines or British cultural studies, both of which have self-imposed limits of different kinds. There are even vocational outcomes in studying these topics. Leisure industries catering for popular tastes have been very successful commercially. There is also an increasing interest in regulating some of the excesses, leading to strong policy and cultural initiatives to ban, regulate or dissuade. Students examining some of the arguments and research in these areas are in an excellent position to engage in these debates as practitioners in subsequent careers. In what follows, recent journal articles tend to dominate. These offer substantial lists of relevant resources of their own in the form of bibliographies and reviews of the literature, as well as containing up-to-date work often based on some original research demonstrating useful research techniques and methods. The articles are often particularly suitable for students in terms of length and level. One article can appear in several sections and be read for different purposes. The relative difficulty of obtaining these articles has now been largely solved thanks to full-text electronic databases such as EBSCO or ZETOC, which permit electronic delivery to desktops
Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture
inside or outside of university premises on a round-the-clock basis. The search engines are well designed and permit rapid and effective searches of enormous archives. Publishers of online journals, especially Sage, sometimes offer free trial periods of full text access as well. The collection below is obviously limited and personal, but these new search, location and delivery techniques permit easy independent exploration of resources and can be used to foster syllabus independence in students. Many of the articles listed below are reviewed and summarised at greater length on the authors personal website where they are ordered and grouped slightly differently see http://www.arasite.org/keyconc.html. The intention is to complete the reviews and to add updated material on that site. Some of the background sociological pieces are also rendered as Reading Guides on http://www.arasite.org/sagelist.htm.
NNOTATED
IBLIOGRAPHY
Adding leisure values to goods In recent years, a number of manufacturers have realised that there is a possibility of marketing their goods as having specific uses for leisure. The classic examples are the Sony Walkman or sports footwear, but other goods include childrens trading cards or Barbie dolls. No-one really needs to buy these goods, but a large number of people are willing to buy them because they become associated with leisure values, with freedom, choice, personal development and the general qualities of popular music or sport, such as a sense of personal liberation. Analysis of this association leads to important questions about choice and how it can be cleverly manipulated by leisure companies, as well as setting the context to explain the increased importance of personal leisure in social life. Armstrong, K (1999) Nike's Communication with Black Audiences. A sociological analysis of advertising effectiveness via symbolic interactionism. Journal of Sport and Social Issues 23(3), 266-286. On the controversial attempts to connect Nike products with US black sporting culture. Some good examples of Nike advertisements. Bull, M (2002) The Seduction of Sound in Consumer Culture. Investigating Walkman Desires. Journal of Consumer Culture 2(1), 81-101. Initially rather general and abstract on the importance of soundscapes, but ultimately an insightful exploration of the pleasures of listening to Walkmans (or, these days, MP3 players?) - users gain an imaginary control over their surroundings. Cook, D (2001) Exchange Value as Pedagogy in Children's Leisure: moral panics in children's culture at century's end. Leisure Sciences 23, 81-98. Excellent discussion of children as consumers, focusing on trading cards, Pokemon and Beanie Babies and the moral panics and paradoxes around them.
HE Academy Network for Hospitality, Leisure, Sport & Tourism, September 2004
Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture Du Gay, P, Hall, S, James, L, Mackay, H, Negus, K (1997) Doing cultural studies: the story of the Sony Walkman. London: Sage Publications in association with the Open University Press. An account of the success of the Sony Walkman in particular, but of similar leisure goods in general, focusing on the articulation of cultural meanings, customer use, design aspects and engineering possibilities. Goldman, R and Papson, S (1998) Nike Culture. London: Sage Publications. A substantial and detailed analysis of the commercial strategy of Nike and the way it has embraced popular culture. Another model of the circulation of culture and economic capital designed for more general use as with Du Gay et al. (above). Critical analysis of Nike advertising especially. Helstein, M (2003) That's Who I Want To Be. The Politics and Production of Desire Within Nike Advertising to Women. Journal of Sport and Social Issues 27(3), 276-292. An insightful piece, with some rather heavyweight (but manageable) theoretical material drawn from poststructralist feminism. Tries to analyse Nike's appeal to women in terms of the notions of emancipation and excellence embodied in the advertisements. Rogers, M (1999) Barbie Culture. London: Sage Publications. Describes and critiques the marketing strategies of Mattel in adding value to their products. Briefly discusses the ways in which consumers have responded, sometimes critically. Ritzer, G and Stillman, T (2001) The Postmodern Ballpark as a Leisure Setting: enchantment and simulated de-McDonaldization. Leisure Sciences 23, 99-113. The general work on disenchantment applied to commercialised baseball. Baseball teams have tried to widen the appeal of their sport by including spectacles, heritage parks and themed areas to their stadia. The analysis easily invites application to British sports. Sheff, D (1993) Game Over: Nintendos Battle to Dominate an Industry, London: Hodder and Stoughton Ltd. An interesting journalistic account of the commercial struggles to develop the company, which range far beyond the ability to add leisure values and include the normal processes of managing competition with rivals and coping with regulation. A useful corrective to the more ideological accounts.
Adventure and Risk The interest in adventure and risk as a part of leisure may be growing generally, and it is certainly important to the leisure pursuits of young people such as students. This topic helps raise issues of the social background or context of what looks like an entirely personal activity the notion of a risk society in various formulations. In theoretical terms, adventure and risk can also cover a number of activities which exceed the obvious cases, such as gambling or even the pursuit of a hobby. Riding motorcycles offers a particularly good case study. Many of these activities are the focus of legislation too, and the pieces examined below often contain policy implications to reduce social harm while maintaining personal freedom. Studying the
pleasures of adventure as a form of escape raises interesting methodological issues too, since exposing oneself to risk can appear to be so irrational for non-participants, and the pleasures are notoriously hard to pin down and study. Students can be challenged to explore risky activities about which they may have strong personal feelings. Beck, U (1992) Risk Society. London: Sage Publications Inc. A challenging read, but much-cited as a backdrop for the interest in adventure. Beezer, A (1995) Women and Adventure Travel Tourism. New Formations 21, 119130. Summarises some female travel writing, critiques male heroics in male travel writing in the 19th century. Critiques modern adventure holidays and their search for postmodern forms of authenticity which manage risks. Bellaby, P and Lawrenson, D (2001) Approaches to the Risk of Riding Motorcycles: reflections on the problem of reconciling statistical risk assessment and motorcyclists' own reasons for riding. The Sociological Review, 368-388. Discussion of the contrast between official statistical accounts of risk and estimates of the motorcyclists themselves. A general model of the social dimensions of risk ensues. Jones, C, Hollenhorst, S, Perna, F (2003) An Empirical Comparison of the FourChannel Flow Model and Adventure Experience Paradigm. Leisure Sciences 25, 17-31. A rather technical piece with some useful material on operationalising and actually testing for 'flow' and explaining the attractions of adventure experience. Interview with Ulrich Beck. (2001) Journal of Consumer Culture 1(2), 261-277. A much more manageable summary of Beck on risk and modernity, with implications for consumerism (including a brief aside on McDonaldization) in interview form. Includes a useful list of Becks publications. Kjlsrd, L. (2003) Adventure Revisited: on structure and metaphor in specialized play. Sociology 37(3), 459-476. An account of the role of 'adventure' (broadly defined as in Simmel and Goffman) in developing self-identity and offering other aspects of adult play. Le Breton, D (2000) Playing Symbolically with Death in Extreme Sports. Body and Society 6(1), 1-11. Lyrical descriptions of the ecstatic pleasures of extreme sports and ordeals. Tries out 'flow' as an explanation, but prefers his own Durkheimian account to do with relating egos to constraints. Natalier, K (2001) Motorcyclists' Interpretations of Risk and Hazard. Journal of Sociology 37(1), 65-80. An Australian study of how bikers sideline official definitions of risk and maintain their own 'lived reality'. Some (unusual) critical comments about biker culture.
Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture Peretti-Watel, P (2003) Neutralisation Theory and the Denial of Risk: some evidence from cannabis use among French adolescents. British Journal of Sociology 54(1), 2142. Part of a larger French study on drug-taking. Adds discussion of techniques to deny risk and re-assert normality, based on the classic work by Sykes and Matza. Rojek, C (1993) Ways of Escape, Modern Transformations in Leisure and Travel. London: Macmillan. Good sections on the closing of traditional avenues of adventure in modernity and the paradoxical and unsatisfactory forms of escape that remain.
Bodies The emergence of a sociology of the body has raised important issues in social theory, and these are especially pertinent to the study of leisure. Much leisure activity involves pleasures located in the body, for example, as some of the examples below indicate (such as sport, fitness or bodily displays such as tattooing or piercing). Students are often able to bring participants knowledge to these activities. Much leisure activity also shares with other areas of life a lot of assumptions about normal bodies and disability. These are often picked up in specific policy discussions about participation for the disabled, but the more general issues are worth exploring as well. Bourdieu, P (1993) Sociology in Question. London: Sage Publications. A collection of short and readable pieces summarising some of the main themes, including a chapter on sport as involving (class) struggles over the legitimate shape and use of bodies. Curry, D (1993) Decorating the Body Politic. New Formations 19, 69-82. On tattooing and piercing as neo-tribal involvement and as a reconceptualisation of the symbolic importance of bodies. Fisher, J (2002) Tattooing the Body, Making Culture. Body and Society 8(4), 91-107. A study of US tattooing, its history, associations with class and gender, and the reasons for its popularity in modernity. Franklin, A (2001) Neo-Darwinian Leisure, the Body and Nature: Hunting and Angling in Modernity. Body and Society 7(4), 57-76. Good account of sociological approaches to hunting and fishing. Tries to develop a 'sociology of the body' alternative, not always successfully, criticises figurational accounts, pursues the issue of the real pleasures of bloodsports. Fussell, S (1992) Muscle: Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder. London: Abacus. An autobiographical account of a bodybuilder joining the subculture of professionals and offering an insider account.
Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture Goffman, E (1968) Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Harmondsworth: Pelican Books. Still the best work on the social importance of disablement and how both the stigmatised and the normals manage their interactions. A good demonstration of Goffmans early research technique too. Grogan, S and Richards, H (2002) Body Image. Focus Groups with Boys and Men. Men and Masculinities 4(3), 219-32. A study of male concerns about their bodies based on focus-group methods (which are defended strongly). Men do care how they look but have to take care to develop the right sort of muscularity, and avoid obsession. Hoogland, R (2002) Fact and Fantasy: the body of desire in the age of post humanism. Journal of Gender Studies 11(3), 213-231. A very thoughtful piece on what human bodies actually are in cultural terms, and on the important role fantasy plays in embodiment. Hughes, B (2002) Baumans Strangers: impairment and the invalidation of disabled people in modern and postmodern cultures. Disability and Society 17(54), 571-584. A very useful account of disabled people as classic Others, still there by implication in discussions of normality in modernity. Jefferson, T (1998) Muscle, Hard Men and Iron Mike Tyson: reflections on desire anxiety and the embodiment of masculinity. Body and Society 4(1), 77-98. A speculative reflection based on some extensive reading of works on masculinity and its embodiment (including some of those cited above). Has a special interest in hard men like Tyson, and discusses connections with class and race. Light, R and Kirk, D (2000) High School Rugby, the Body and the Reproduction of Hegemonic Masculinity. Sport, Education and Society 5(2), 163-176. Uses Foucault and Bourdieu to illuminate fieldwork undertaken during rugby training at a boys school in Australia. Particular significance is attached to body-shaping regimes as central to hegemonic masculinity. Maguire, J (2002) Body Lessons: fitness publishing and the cultural production of the fitness consumer. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 37(3-4), 449-464. A continuation of Bourdieu's work on fitness and the tastes of various groups for it. Also analyses the discourses of fitness magazines and assesses their impact and role. Patton, C (2001) Rock Hard: Judging the Female Physique. Journal of Sport and Social Issues 25(2), 118-140. Offers a history of the reactions to female body building as a sport and current ambiguities. Traces the themes to feminist work on spectatorship.
Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture Pitts, V (1998) Reclaiming the Female Body: Embodied Identity Work, Resistance and the Grotesque. Body and Society 4(3), 67-84. A fascinating study of the world of female scarifiers (people who carve scars into their bodies), exploring the politics of the acts and also the pleasures. Sassatelli, R (1999) Interaction Order and Beyond: A Field Analysis of Body Culture. Body and Society 5(2-3), 227-248. Applies Goffmans work on interaction in special regions to a study of the fitness gym. Stresses the emergent and context-bound nature of interactions to deny simple external determinations. Participants strategies to manage their training include ironic participation. Sweetman, P (1999) Anchoring the (Postmodern) Self? Body Modification, Fashion and Identity. Body and Society 5(2-3), 51-76. Summarises the debates about tattooing as conformity or resistance in the context of a much broader account of fashion in postmodernism. Uses interviews to suggest that tattooing and piercing can also be an anti-fashion expression of individuality Wacquant, L (1995) Pugs at Work: Bodily Capital and Bodily Labour Among Professional Boxers. Body and Society, 1(1)65-93. A qualitative study of the ways in which boxers see and invest in their bodies and bodily capital. Implications for the embodiment of the habitus as in Bourdieu.
Class Social class is an interestingly problematic category, still taken as important by theorists, and a part of many introductions to the study of leisure. Yet for students, as well as other analysts, it remains controversial. Many students will perceive the relevance of studying different distributions of disposable income or time for participation in leisure, and many can provide examples of differences in class tastes. But the academic literature offers additional or betterspecified discussions, especially Marxist or Bourdieuvian options. Here, the challenge is to discuss what might lie beneath the surface of everyday life. Bourdieu, P (1986) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge. A massive study of social class in France and how it depends on an internalised and sociallystructured habitus which also affects cultural tastes. It features a substantial empirical study with some good (implicit) suggestions for British research, and covers leisure pursuits such as music, food and sport. Bourdieu, P (1993) Sociology in Question. London: Sage Publications. See the section on Bodies above. Clarke, J and Critcher, C (1985) The Devil Makes Work Leisure in Capitalist Britain. London: Macmillan. An historical survey of class struggle (and patriarchy) and their effects on modern leisure. Takes a variant of a Marxist definition of social class which operates beneath the surface of
conventional social stratification and reproduces a misleading surface structure of choice and freedom. Kirk, J (2002) Invisible Ink: Working-class writing and the end of class. European Journal of Cultural Studies 5(3), 343-362. Argues for the continuing importance of social class in cultural studies. Analyses some examples of working-class writing. Rojek, C (2001) Celebrity. London: Reaktion Books. In developing a theory of modern celebrity, reviews and applies Veblen on the leisure class. Rose, J (2002) The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. A comprehensive historical account of the culture and leisure pursuits of the working class in industrial Britain. An excellent source of material to challenge social stereotypes. Wilson, T (2002) The Paradox of Social Class and Sports Involvement: the roles of cultural and economic capital. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 37(1), 516. A recent attempt to operationalise class in the American context. Studies general participation rates and participation in particular 'prole' (working class) sports in order to test the view that class preferences are blurring. Uses US data and notions of economic and cultural capital derived from Bourdieu, and shows the latter is important. NB - gender differences emerge here as insignificant.
Clubbing and Rave These activities serve as a classic case where students perceptions and experiences might differ considerably from those of academics or lecturers. The literature on rave is necessarily slightly dated, but there are some general implications. There is no doubt about the economic and social importance of these activities, and their popularity among young adults. There is no shortage of policy-based or moral commentary about them either. The academic work offers an attempt to understand and inform without taking an obvious moral stance. The themes are familiar ones are clubbing or raving sites of cultural freedom, choice and personal enjoyment, or are there less obvious social and commercial factors at work in explaining their popularity? Critcher, C (2000) Still raving: social reaction to Ecstasy. Leisure Studies 19,145-62. Discusses some recent approaches to rave, including ethnographic studies and work on risk. Follows a classic gramscian account of rave as a moral panic with authoritarian undertones. Glover, T (2003) Regulating the Rave Scene: Exploring the Policy Alternatives of Government. Leisure Sciences 25, 307-325. An interesting review from a North American (US and Canada) perspective. Considers policy options and supports 'harm reduction' rather than prohibition.
Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture Hill, A (2002) Acid House and Thatcherism: noise, the mob and the English countryside. British Journal of Sociology 53(1), 89-105. Another classic gramscian account, trying to identify exactly what it is about rave that made it seem a political and cultural threat. Malbon, B (1999) Clubbing: dancing, ecstasy and vitality. London: Routledge. Based on an insightful ethnographic study structured as a narrative about going clubbing. An interesting account of the world of the clubber but possibly rather uncritical in celebrating the social skills and reflexive capacities required. Useful to counter anxieties and stereotypes. Redhead, S (ed.) (1993) Rave Off: politics and deviance in contemporary youth culture. Aldershot: Avebury Press. A collection of pieces including a postmodernist analysis by Melechi which insists that rave is about disappearance and ecstatic communication. Redhead, S (ed.) (1998) The Clubcultures Reader. London: Routledge. Another useful collection of essays covering the main approaches and debates. Steins, E (2003) [1997] On Peace, Love, Dancing and Drugs This is an online insiders account of clubbing and taking Ecstasy, possibly fictional. Thornton, S (1995) Club cultures: music, media and subcultural capital. Cambridge: Polity Press. Based on some participant observations. Involves some theoretical novelties in suggesting a break with classical subculture theories to suggest the important role of the club for British youth (possibly now a bit dated?). Taste publics and subcultural capital are explored as important factors, and the latter can be provided by commercial companies.
Disney The Disney Company occupies a central place in the provision of commercially successful leisure, and it has become a model for many companies that wish to make a leisure business out of providing fantasy. Many of the academic critics are wholly hostile and deeply concerned about Disney social and political values, and how they are smuggled into Disney products in the guise of having innocent fun. By contrast, many students are much more likely to have simply enjoyed Disney products: some are fiercely loyal; many are inclined to see academic criticism of Disney as pointless, carping, or misguided. This topic offers an excellent chance to test out the benefits and limits of academic studies and commonsense perceptions equally. Alternatively, the work can be seen simply as exploring the origins of the companys remarkable appeal and success. Bryman, A (1995) Disney and His Worlds. London: Routledge. Perhaps the best account of the debates about Disney theme parks and their ideological role. Needs updating in terms of the facilities now on offer. Byrne, E and McQuillan, M (1999) Deconstructing Disney. London: Pluto Press.
A relentlessly critical work based on post perspectives which focuses on the later Disney movies and their ideological role in the New World Order. Fjellman, S (1992) Vinyl Leaves: Walt Disney World and America. Oxford: Westview Press. Relentless and penetrating Marxist critique of the commercial and ideological agenda of Walt Disney World. Tries to dismiss more playful postmodernist readings. Hansen, M (1993) Of Mice and Ducks: Benjamin and Adorno on Disney. The South Atlantic Quarterly 92(1), 27-61. An illuminating reading of (mostly early) Disney cartoons and the potential and limits of animation generally, using critical theorys version of Freudian research. As with the other critiques, this one is an ideal way to present the challenge to students of seeing low culture critiqued by high theory. Hebdige, D (2003) Dis-Gnosis: Disney and the Re-Tooling of Knowledge, Art, Culture, Life, etc. Cultural Studies 17(2), 150-167. A witty aesthetic critique of Disneyfication and its colonisation of the real world via infantilism. Includes work on the Disney new town Celebration. King, M (1996) The Audience in the Wilderness. Journal of Popular Film and Television 24(2), 60-68. An account of the Disneyfication of nature and animals via an examination of the 'True-Life Adventure' series. Classic Disney ideology critique. Rojek, C (1993) Disney Culture. Leisure Studies 12,121-35. A critique of the social and cultural values of the theme parks, but also outlines how globalisation is permitting new, unofficial and critical appropriations of Disney symbols. Smoodin, E (ed.) (1994) Disney Discourse: producing the Magic Kingdom. New York: Routledge. Another critical collection, including some interesting expos material, critiques of Disney history and of patriarchy in the movies (especially The Little Mermaid, a favourite for critics). The Project on Disney (1995) Inside the Mouse: work and play at Disney World. London: Rivers Oram Press. A feminist collection of essays on aspects of the company and its Florida theme park, including discussion with hostile Disney employees and suggestions on how to subvert the companys gaze. Wayne, M (2003) Post-Fordism, monopoly capitalism, and Hollywood's media industrial complex. International Journal of Cultural Studies 6(1), 82-103. This article attempts to rescue Marxist theory from the challenge of postfordist theories, and discusses the economic organisation of Hollywood and Disney in particular.
10
Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture Zukin S (1990) Socio-Spatial Prototypes of a New Organization of Consumption: the role of real cultural capital. Sociology 24(1), 37-56. Discusses Disney strategies and processes of gentrification as examples of how to turn leisure values into hard economic capital. A forerunner for subsequent work on cities.
Drug-taking (see also Clubbing and Rave) Taking illegal drugs is an important leisure activity, at least as judged by the time, frequency and money involved. There are ethical issues involved as well as legal ones, but this topic (and others below) serve to extend the discussion of what real leisure is and how it might be analysed. The studies listed below range from surveys to participant-observational studies, but all raise interesting methodological problems (including defining and measuring drug-use), and important policy considerations. For example, if drug use is becoming normalised, can it be policed as it once was? What might be done instead? Becker, H (1973) Outsiders: studies in the sociology of deviance. New York: the Free Press of Glencoe. Contains the classic study on becoming a marijuana user, with its insistence on the importance of a supportive subculture. Interesting as a benchmark to compare later patterns of cannabis use. Hammersley, R, Khan, F and Ditton, J (2002) Ecstasy and the Rise of the Chemical Generation. London: Routledge. A long-term study of Ecstacy users in Glasgow, examining their pleasures, risks and careers. A generally sympathetic account. Lenton, S, Boys, A and Norcross, K (1997) Raves, Drugs and Experience: drug use by a sample of people who attended raves in Western Australia. Addiction 92(10), 13271337. A survey of drug use (types of drugs used, frequency, most common locations including school and raves) and a policy-oriented study of knowledge of harm and risk. Useful, as with other surveys, as a source of data to compare with student experiences. McGuigan, J (1992) Cultural Populism. London: Routledge. Sets out some policy implications and outlines the pros and cons of legalising cannabis in the context of broader discussion about the role of the State. Parker, H, Aldridge, J and Measham, F (1998) Illegal Leisure: The Normalisation of Adolescent Recreational Drug Use. London: Routledge. This presents the results of a substantial study of drug-taking in England, based on questionnaires and interviews. Introduces the notion of normalisation and connects it to accounts of risk society. General support for harm reduction policies.
11
Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture Parker, H, Williams, L and Aldridge, J (2002) The Normalisation of Sensible Recreational Drug Use: further evidence from the North West England longitudinal study. Sociology 36(4), 941-964. Further discussion of the concept of normalisation supported by statistical data and other findings. This article also lists other useful publications produced by the team. Peretti-Watel, P (2003) Neutralisation theory and the denial of risk: some evidence from cannabis use among French adolescents. British Journal of Sociology 54(1), 21-42. Useful comparative perspective, based on work in the sociology of deviance, extending the work of Sykes and Matza on techniques of neutralisation and Becker on cannabis use. Some reference to a large European quantitative study of drug users.
Gender Originally studied as another classic demographic factor affecting participation in leisure, studies of gender have also done much to raise issues of the patriarchal organisational biases in leisure provision, and the academic ones in studying leisure (see Feminism). Analyses were subsequently focused on the construction of masculinity as well as femininity. As the number of genders has increased (to include minority sexual orientations as well as just heterosexual men and women), so studies of the gendered nature of leisure has been extended. Gay leisure interests have emerged from relative obscurity and neglect to become a major hidden determinant of straight leisure activity too, for example. Policy aimed at equal participation has also become more complex, as unintended consequences and unknown sources of discrimination have been clarified. Finally, leisure has become seen as a source of gendered identities as well as a reflection of them. (See also Feminism(s) and several other entries other entries including Bodies). Anderson, K (1999) Snowboarding: the Construction of Gender in an Emerging Sport. Journal of Sport and Social Issues 23(1), 55-79. Unusual work on the actual construction of gendered identities in a new sport. Includes a useful review of the classic approaches. Based on interviews and analysing specialist sport magazines. Bernstein, A 2002) Is It Time for a Victory Lap? Changes in the media coverage of women in sport. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 37(3-4), 415 -428. An analysis of the depiction of women's sport on US TV, more women appear, but still in a stereotyped way. Bramham, P (2003) Boys, Masculinities and PE. Sport, Education and Society 8(1), 5771. Some useful empirical work on how boys reproduce and resist dominant notions of masculinity in their PE lessons and sports activities.
12
Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture Burgess, I, Edwards, A, and Skinner, J (2003) Football Culture in an Australian School Setting: the construction of masculine identity. Sport, Education and Society 8(2), 199212. A very useful discussion of the concept of hegemonic masculinity and the role of sport. A pessimistic version of hegemony. Coalter, F (1999) Sport and Recreation in the United Kingdom: flow with the flow or buck the trends? Managing Leisure 4, 24-39. Discusses statistics on changes in womens participation in sport and leisure (among other trends), the paradoxes and the implications for policy. Collins, L (2002) Working out the Contradictions. Feminism and Aerobics. Journal of Sport and Social Issues 26(1), 85-109. A very informative piece on how feminists resist oppressive values in aerobics and learn to cope with excessive masculinity. Considerable general implications for all studies of 'disciplinary apparatuses'. Connell, R (1995) Masculinities. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. The classic origin of work on hegemonic masculinity and its dimensions. Dyer, R (2002) The Culture of Queers. London and New York: Routledge. A useful exploration of queer theory and its application to sexual identity. A good student introduction in that it argues for a subterranean effect (an absent presence) of gay culture and gay aesthetics on much seemingly straight popular culture. Elling, A, De Knop, P and Knoppers, A (2003) Gay/Lesbian Sport Clubs and Events. Places of Homo-Social Bonding and Cultural Resistance? International Review for the Sociology of Sport 38(4), 441-456. A critical discussion of the contradictory implications of using sport to integrate sexual minorities in Holland followed by a case-study of members of gay/lesbian volleyball clubs to pin down the reasons for joining. Free, M and Hughson, J (2003) Settling Accounts with Hooligans. Gender Blindness in Football Supporter Subculture Research. Men and Masculinities 6(2), 136-155. An insightful feminist re-reading of some accounts of football supporting aimed at restoring the significance of gender relations. Grogan, S and Richards, H (2002) Body Image. Focus Groups with Boys and Men. Men and Masculinities 4(3), 219-232. A study of male concerns about their bodies based on focus-group methods (which are defended strongly). Men do care how they look but have to be careful not to try too hard.
13
Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture Hughson, J (2000) The Boys Are Back in Town. Soccer Support and the Institutional Reproduction of Masculinity. Journal of Sport and Social Issues 24(1), 18-23. A thorough study of Australian Croatian supporters, which provides a useful comparative dimension, but also a useful review of the classic British works on soccer support and masculinity. Hurtes, K (2002) Social Dependency: the impact of adolescent female culture. Leisure Sciences 24, 109-121. A study of urban girls on outdoor education in the USA, and how their gendered identities affect their enjoyment and participation. Kivell, P and Kleiber, D (2000) Leisure in the Identity Formation of Lesbian/ Gay Youth: Personal, but not social. Leisure Sciences 22, 215-232. Interviews some gay and lesbian adolescents and finds leisure is interpreted for personal implications. Leisure is unable to become a full commitment because of its social risks for non-heterosexuals. Light, R and Kirk, D (2000) High School Rugby, the Body and the Reproduction of Hegemonic Masculinity. Sport, Education and Society 5(2), 163-176. Based on Bourdieu and Foucault and focused on 'hegemonic masculinity', grounded in a case study of the effects of rugby training and playing in Australia. McRobbie, A and Nava, M (eds.) (1984) Gender and Generation. London: Macmillan. A classic early study of the popular cultural activities of women and girls. Includes a study of the pleasures of 1980s disco dancing. Messner, M, Duncan, M and Cooky, C (2003) Silence, Sports Bras and Wrestling Porn. Women in Televised Sports News and Highlights Shows. Journal of Sport and Social Issues 27(1), 38-51. The latest in a longitudinal study of coverage of women in US sports programmes. A simple methodology is used to assess coverage, findings suggest that coverage of women is still thin and often sexually demeaning. Nauright, J and Chandler, T (eds.) Making Men: Rugby and Masculine Identity. London: Frank Cass and Co Ltd. A good discussion of the gendered origins and practices of rugby. Perhaps a little overdeterministic? Phillips, K (2002) Textual Strategies, Plastic Tactics. Reading Batman and Barbie. Journal of Material Culture 7(2) 123-136. An interesting discussion of how the actual material form of the object text or plastic affects what might be done with it in terms of resistance to dominant conceptions of gender. Seidman, S (ed.) (1996) Queer Theory/ Sociology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd. A useful introduction to queer theory. Includes work by Plummer on acquiring a gay identity.
14
Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture Silva, E (2000) The Cook, the Cooker and the Gendering of the Kitchen. The Sociological Review 48(4), 612-629. Discussion of the effects of technological change in cooking on gender relations and viceversa. Introduces the basics of actor network theory and applies poststructuralist feminism. Whannel, G (1999) Sports Stars, Narrativisation and Masculinities. Leisure Studies 18(3), 249-265. A discussion of the dominant forms of masculinity expressed in coverage of male sports stars (including the initially hostile coverage of Beckham), and how this is developed into whole narratives about proper behaviours and performances. Wiley, C, Shaw, S, Havitz, M (2000) Men's and Women's Involvement in Sports: An Examination of the Gendered Aspects of Leisure Involvement. Leisure Sciences 22, 1931. A very interesting empirical attempt to measure involvement. Surprising results too, gender seems to not be strongly connected with involvement.
McDonaldization George Ritzer uses the development of McDonalds to introduce and illustrate some analytical themes based on the work of Max Weber (which makes Weber much more teachable). These themes include an examination of production, a useful counterpoint to the more frequent studies based on consumption alone. The earlier work, which has sparked considerable debate, drew on concepts of rationalisation and its dehumanising effects, while the later work pursues the Weberian theme of disenchantment and considers attempts to (re)enchant consumer industries. A wide range of such industries is considered. A major underlying theme is the familiar one of manipulation versus consumer resistance (the latter being almost entirely ignored at first by Ritzer, and later being subject to a more subtle analysis turning on the provision of highly constrained choice). These themes are also played out on a global scale as various nations adopt, incorporate, modify or resist McDonaldization. Alfino, M, Caputo, J and Wynyard, R (eds.) (1998) McDonaldization Revisited: critical essays on consumer culture. Connecticut: Praeger Publishers. A useful collection of critical pieces, mostly celebrating the ability of the consumer to impose meanings on the McDonalds experience. Fantasia, R (1995) Fast Food in France. Theory and Society 24(2), 201-243. An account of accommodation and resistance including French opposition to McDonalds, but also a good account of the cultural appeal of McDonalds as American and progressive for the young petit bourgeoisie and adolescents. Kellner, D (2003) Theorizing/Resisting McDonaldization: A Multiperspectivist Approach. [online] http://www.uta.edu/huma/illuminations/kell30.htm. An excellent theoretical critique of the early reliance on Weber, and a sketch of developments needed to develop the work (many of which were taken up subsequently by Ritzer).
15
Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture Ram, U (2004) Glocommodification: How the Global Consumes the Local - McDonald's in Israel. Current Sociology 52(1), 11-31. Good examples of combinations of local and global in the fast food business. Some critical discussion of the Israeli fast food industry. The overall conclusion is that commodification dominates. Ritzer, G (1993) The McDonaldization of Society: an investigation into the changing character of contemporary social life. London: Sage Publications Ltd. The classic and most accessible statement of the McDonaldization thesis. Ritzer, G (1996) McUniversity in the Postmodern Consumer Society. Quality in Higher Education 2(3), 185199. A trenchant examination and critique of trends in university organisation, which makes a useful case study (and one which is close to home for students). A clearly transitional piece moving from Weber into Marxism and Baudrillard in response to his critics. Ritzer, G (1999) Enchanting a Disenchanted World: revolutionizing the means of consumption. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press. The later work developed and illustrated with many examples of the appeal of cathedrals of consumption, from shopping malls to theme parks to cash machines. . Ritzer, G and Liska, A (1997) McDisneyization and Post-Tourism: Complementary Perspectives on Contemporary Tourism. In C Rojek and J Urry (eds.) (1997) Touring Cultures: Transformations of Travel and Theory. London: Routledge. Perhaps the most extensive application of the classic thesis which includes tourism examples and also whole themed environments, McWorlds. Ritzer, G and Stillman, T (2001) The Postmodern Ballpark as a Leisure Setting: Enchantment and Simulated De-McDonaldization. Leisure Sciences 23, 99-113. Applies McDonaldization and 'enchantment' to baseball (and the examples might well fit UK football). Adds in some themes from postmodern and Marxist analysis in a useful summary of the theoretical development of the later work. Concludes McDonaldization is only concealed not reversed by 'enchantment' strategies. Smart, B (ed.) (1999) Resisting McDonaldization. London: Sage Publications Ltd. A collection of critical pieces on the McDonaldization thesis, including Jarys specific attempt to apply the work critically to sport and leisure more generally. Ritzers reply to his critics anticipates the later work. Traphagen, J and Brown, L (2002) Fast food and intergenerational commensality in Japan: new styles and old patterns. Ethnology 41(2), 119-134. More of a 'transnational' account of Japanese localisation, resistance and incorporation of US fast food, which denies globalised McDonaldization, unlike Ram. Interesting comparative material.
16
Methods This section focuses on some demonstrations of available methods as represented largely in short articles. Rather than offer textbooks alone, it is sometimes useful to provide actual examples of pieces which use different methods instead or as well. These seem more likely to give a sense of the craft elements for those contemplating research of their own, rather than focusing unduly on theoretical or philosophical debates about meaning. Qualitative Studies Bennett, A (2002) Researching youth culture and popular music: a methodological critique. British Journal of Sociology 53(3), 451-466. Critiques Marxist, especially gramscian, work on youth culture and suggest that the limits can be overcome by less constrained and more open forms of ethnography. Bernstein, E (2001) The meaning of the purchase. Desire, demand and the commerce of sex. Ethnography 4(1), 389-420. An ethnographic study of the clients of prostitutes, with some obvious methodological difficulties to overcome. Bourdieu, P (2000) Making the Economic Habitus. Algerian Workers Revisited. Ethnography 1(1), 17-41. Critical ethnography demonstrated here, with its capacities to make the familiar strange and vice-versa. The article discusses the changes in Kabylian (Algerian) traditional society after colonisation in order to illustrate processes of commodification Bramham, P (2003) Boys, Masculinities and PE. Sport, Education and Society 8(1), 5771. Useful empirical work on how boys reproduce and resist dominant notions of masculinity in their PE lessons and sports activities. Burgin, V, Donald, J and Kaplan, C (eds.) (1989) Formations of Fantasy. London: Routledge. See especially the chapter by Walkerdine on how to study fantasies, how the fantasies on offer in films spill over into everyday life, and how the fantasies of the researcher are engaged as well as those of the subject. Clough, P (2001) On the Relationship of the Criticism of Ethnographic Writing and the Cultural Studies of Science. Cultural Studies - Critical Materials 1(2), 240-270. An excellent summary of her own and Cliffords critique of ethnographic writing as the literary construction of knowledge. Connected to (feminist) post-structuralist studies of science and technology (well after Kuhn) and their social impact. Holland, B (1997) Surviving leisure time racism: the burden of racial harassment on Britain's black footballers. Leisure Studies 16(4), 261-277. Based on observations and interviews with black players. Includes a thoughtful way to identify the specifics of the racialised 'burden of abuse' aimed at players.
17
Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture Holyfield, L (1999) Manufacturing Adventure. The Buying and Selling of Emotions. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 28(1), 3-32. A participant-observation and interview-based study of US white-water rafting. Analysis of the guides management of the contradictions of risk, tension, fear and safety (and a commentary on serious leisure) and the attempt to reconcile personal and commercial goals. Hurtes, M (2002) Social Dependency: The Impact of Adolescent Female Culture. Leisure Sciences 24, 109-121. An ethnographic study of young urban American females on an outdoor education trip, and how their notions of femininity limit their participation. Marshall, J (2003) The Sexual Life of Cyber-Savants. The Australian Journal of Anthropology 15(2), 229-248. An account of the contradictions and pleasures, the interaction of fantasy and authenticity and of offline and online worlds in 'netsex', via observations of interaction (human and machine). Noy, C (2004) This Trip Really Changed Me: Backpackers' Narratives of Self Change. Annals of Tourism Research 31(1), 78-102. A useful demonstration of the power of analysing narratives as linked to identity, social and cultural contexts and 'performance'. Plummer, K (1999) The Ethnographic Society at the Centurys End. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 28(6), 641-649. A discussion of the future prospects of academic ethnography now that the techniques have become public. A plea for the renewal of ethical and academic standards. Many examples of commended work, often in the field of sexual identity. Shaw, S (1999) Men's leisure and women's lives: the impact of pornography on women. Leisure Studies 18, 197-212. Some original small-scale research on the sensitive topic of women's attitudes towards, and their fears about, male use of pornography. Stoller, P (2002) Crossroads. Tracing African paths on New York City streets. Ethnography 3(1), 35-62. An example of ethnographic work on West African traders in New York and the social and economic complexities they inhabit. Argues for epistemological and methodological flexibility. Thomsen, S, Straubhaar J, Bolyard, D (1998) Ethnomethodology and the Study of Online Communities: Exploring the Cyber Streets. A paper presented to IRIS'98 (Internet Research and Information for Social Sciences) [online] http://www.sosig.ac.uk/iriss/welcome.html. Explores some issues about how to research online communities, and adapts techniques from ethnography and ethnomethodology.
18
Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture Wacquant, L (1995) Pugs at Work: Bodily Capital and Bodily Labour Among Professional Boxers. Body and Society 1(1), 65-93. A participant-observation study of professional boxers from one of Bourdieu's main colleagues. Lots of theoretically-informed data on practice and the body and embodiment in habituses in concrete circumstances. Wacquant, L (2001) Whores, Slaves and Stallions: Languages of Exploitation and Accommodation Among Boxers. Body and Society 7(2-3), 181-94. Further data from the above study, this time focusing on work relations and criminality in boxing, and how boxers rationalise their own exploitation. Willis, P (1977) Learning to Labour How Working Class Kids get Working Class Jobs. Farnborough: Saxon House. A classic piece of Marxist ethnography involving an exploration of the culture of a group of working class lads followed by a critical theoretical commentary on how their identity has been substantially constrained all along. Willis uses his own vocabulary of penetrations and limitations. Willis P (1980) Notes on Method. In S Hall, D Hobson, A Lowe and P Willis (eds.) (1980) Culture, Media and Language. London: Hutchinson. Notices Marxist criticisms of ethnography as potentially positivist, but argues for its use in generating a necessary surprise to counter theoretical closure. Willis, P and Trondman, M (2000) Manifesto for Ethnography. Ethnography 1(1), 5-16. Opens a new journal for ethnography with a brief defence of the technique against some modern criticisms and a plea for more theoretically informed ethnography.
Quantitative Studies Anderson, C and Dill, K (2000) Video Games and Aggressive Thoughts, Feelings, and Behavior in the Laboratory and in Life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78(4), 772-790. A substantial psychological study of the effects of video games on aggression, involving both a 'real-life' co-relational approach and a laboratory experiment. Argues there is cause for concern, but results are complex and mixed. Gentile, D, Lynch, P, Ruh Linder, J and Walsh, D (2004) The effects of violent video game habits on adolescent hostility, aggressive behaviours, and school performance. Journal of Adolescence 27(1), 5-22. A classic psychological study, based on Anderson and Dill, but investigating effects on school behaviours this time. The usual combination of statistical tests and reasoning, strong opinion and cautious findings.
19
Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture Jones, C, Hollenhorst, S, Perna, F (2003) An Empirical Comparison of the FourChannel Flow Model and Adventure Experience Paradigm. Leisure Sciences 25, 17-31. A rather technical piece comparing two well-developed measuring instruments with some particularly useful material on operationalising and actually testing for 'flow'. Parker, H, Williams, L and Aldridge, J (2002) The Normalisation of Sensible Recreational Drug Use: further evidence from the North-West England Longitudinal Study. Sociology 36(4), 941-964. Follow up to a large empirical study of drug-taking in the UK, using both questionnaires and interviews. Further evidence of 'normalisation' is demonstrated from the data. Roberts, K (1997) Same activities, different meanings: British youth cultures in the 1990s. Leisure Studies 16(1), 1-16. Discusses whether youth cultures are more fluid and whether identities are based on them. Uses some survey data to raise doubts. Vandewater, E, Shim, M, Caplovitz, A (2004) Linking obesity and activity level with children's television and video game use. Journal of Adolescence 27, 71-85. A statistical study showing surprisingly weak, unusually complex, or even absent relations between watching TV and playing video games and childhood obesity in the USA. The authors conclude there just is no 'magic bullet' to cure obesity. Wiley, C, Shaw, S, Havitz, M (2000) Men's and Women's Involvement in Sports: An Examination of the Gendered Aspects of Leisure Involvement. Leisure Sciences 22, 1931. A very interesting empirical attempt to measure involvement. Counterintuitive results too, gender seems not strongly connected with involvement. Wilson, T (2002) The Paradox of Social Class and Sports Involvement: the roles of cultural and economic capital. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 37(1), 516. A study of US social class relations and sport, both general participation rates and participation in particular 'prole' sports. Uses US data and notions of economic and cultural capital (controversially) derived from Bourdieu, and shows the latter is important. NB - gender differences emerge here as insignificant. Woodward, I, Emmison, M, and Smith, P (2000) Consumerism, disorientation and postmodern space: a modest test of an immodest theory. British Journal of Sociology 51(2), 339-354. A sceptical sociological piece attempting to operationalise and test empirically the view that postmodern buildings, especially shopping malls, induce disorientation and thus increase vulnerability to consumerism (a view embraced both by Jameson and Gottdeiner).
20
Multiple Application There are several major works on leisure that appear again and again in more specific discussions. They are obviously valuable in providing deep links between topics (see the section on teaching below). Bourdieu, P (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. A classic statement of the need to review the conception of practice as the acting out of rules. Important implications for ethnography ensue. Has led to a renewal of the Sociology of the Body. Critcher, C, Bramham, P and Tomlinson, A (eds.) (1995) Sociology of Leisure: a reader. London: E & F N Spon. A useful introductory work with some good illustrations of different approaches to, and debates about, social class and gender. De Certeau, M (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. A classic account of the ways in which the everyday provides a source to resist commercial and ideological pressure. The most relevant chapter is on walking in the city, which helps us see how local inhabitants impose their own meanings on cityscapes which may well contradict those of the city themers. Also contains a useful critique of Bourdieu and Foucault and their use of ethnographic data. During, S (ed.) (1993) The Cultural Studies Reader. London and New York: Routledge. A large collection of essays on popular culture, including chapters by Bourdieu on sports and social class, Hall on coding, Morris on the appropriation of shopping centres, and Ross on the pleasures of pornography. Eco, U (1987) Travels in Hyperreality. London: Picador. Can be read as an account of travel and tourism, including visits to intentionally themed and designed locations (including Disneyland). A critique which admires the ingenuity, but also spots the commercial agenda. Featherstone M (1991) Consumer Culture and Postmodernism. London: Sage Publications. One of many works arguing for the emergence of consumerism as a major component of postmodern identity. Fiske, J (1989) Reading the Popular. London: Unwin Hyman. A collection of essays celebrating consumer culture and the power of modern consumers to resist commercial and ideological pressures. Accompanied by a sister volume called Understanding Popular Culture with the same publishing data. This volume contains an essay on resistance at the shopping mall.
21
Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture MacCannell, D (1989) The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (revised edn.). New York: Shocken Books. A famous critique of commercialised tourism and other leisure activities. Moi, T (ed.) (1986) The Kristeva Reader. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. A very useful collection of introductory pieces to the work of this prominent and relevant feminist thinker. Rojek, C (1995) Decentring Leisure: rethinking leisure theory. London: Sage Publications Ltd. A wide-ranging survey of relevant theory, with specific sections on the work-leisure relationship and gender. Ritzer, G (1999) Enchanting a Disenchanted World: revolutionizing the means of consumption. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press. A Weberian account of the ways in which large leisure businesses have responded to customer disenchantment and disengagement by attempting to add leisure and cultural values to the new cathedrals of consumption. Rojek, C (1993) Ways of Escape. Basingstoke: the Macmillan Press. Essays on the theme of leisure as a form of escape and the paradoxes of commercial versions of escape. Rich descriptions of many commercialised tourist sights. Slater, D (1997) Consumer Culture and Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. A useful collection on the background to debates about consumerism and its role in modernity. Turner, B (1996) The Body and Society: explorations in social theory. London: Sage Publications. An early argument for the need to study bodies rather than thoughts or ideas. Aimed at sociologists especially, but with clear implications for leisure studies.
Policy The work included here covers both general and specific discussions of current policy. The origin of policies is an important critical theme, pursued in works such as Bennett or McGuigan, which investigate the intertwining of social and political themes in policy formation. More specifically, debate in Britain at least has been dominated by discussions of the Third Way approach embraced by New Labour as applied to various leisure projects, including the ill-fated Millennium Dome. Bennett, T (1998) Culture: a Reformers Science. London: Sage Publications. Takes a Foucaldian view of the formation of policy, illustrated with an analysis of the themes expressed in policy towards museum displays. Some apology for, and critique of, his formerly gramscian position.
22
Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture Burns, P (2004) Tourism Planning. A Third Way? Annals of Tourism Research 31(1), 24-43. Takes Giddens' '5 dilemmas' in Third Way thinking and explores implications for more complex and consensual tourism planning. Rather idealistic and not as critical as Stevens and Green below. Colebatch, H (2002) Policy (2nd edn). Buckingham: Open University Press. A useful student introduction clarifying some meanings of the term and tracing the complexities of the path from formulation to implementation. Donald, J and Hall, S (1986) Politics and Ideology. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Includes discussion of the pros and cons of having an overall leisure policy. Discusses the Italian fascist policy towards leisure in the 1930s, and the reasons for its failure. Dunning, E and Waddington, I (2003) Sport as a Drug and Drugs in Sport. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 38(3), 351-368. Useful for its scepticism about policies promoting participation in sport as minimising illegal activities among the young. Participation in sport and in drug-taking can deliver similar pleasures, not necessarily alternative ones. Giddens, A (1998) The Third Way: the renewal of social democracy. Cambridge: Polity Press. Arguably the simplest and most relevant version of the sustained work that might underpin New Labour on policy. Jary, D. (2002) Review Article: The Global Third Way Debate. The Sociological Review 50(3), 437-449. A useful and fairly short overview about developments in Third Way thinking. McGuigan, J (1992) Cultural Populism. London: Routledge. Contains a useful section on the history and ambiguities of British State policies towards leisure, including the arts and sport. McGuigan, J (2003) The social construction of a cultural disaster: New Labour's Millennium Experience. Cultural Studies 17(5), 669-690. Very critical analysis of the mixture of corporate ideology, arrogance and New Labour 'Third Way' policy that produced the Millennium Dome. One of a series of pieces on the Dome referenced in this article. Prideaux, S (2001) New Labour, Old Functionalism: The Underlying Contradictions of Welfare Reform in the US and the UK. Social Policy and Administration 35(1), 85-15. Pursues links between functionalist conceptions and social policy under Reagan and New Labour. Mostly considers welfare policies but there are general implication for Third Way thinking and leisure policy.
23
Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture Stevens, D and Green, P (2002) Explaining continuity and change in the transition from compulsory competitive tendering to best value for sport and recreation management. Managing Leisure 7, 124-138. Discussion of the pros and cons of the two approaches in UK leisure provision and their underlying philosophies - Thatcherism on the one hand and Third Way/New Labour on the other.
Pornography Discussing this issue raises obvious legal, ethical and personal dilemmas. However, the consumption of pornography is undoubtedly a major leisure pursuit, albeit one strongly dominated by males. The academic work focuses on the issue of balancing the personal pleasures and freedoms against the different kinds of social harm that might be produced, and there are strongly opposed views, with differing policy implications. Also apparent is a more recent attempt to try to grasp the pleasures, risks and effects by close textual analysis of pornographic materials. Attwood, F (2002) A Very British Carnival: women, sex and transgression in Fiesta magazine. European Journal of Cultural Studies 5(1), 91-105. A detailed analysis of a soft-porn British magazine to test readings of pornography as male power or as transgressive. Identifies peculiar British features of lingering guilt and anxiety despite evidence of some male domination. Attwood, F (2002) Reading Pornography: The Paradigm Shift in Pornography Research. Sexualities 5(1), 91-105. Traces through the general debate in media studies about texts and their effects leading to reconceptualisations of the reader as an active interpreter in a cultural context. Applies this change to the pornography debate (which is very well summarised). Beggan, J and Allison, S (2003) Reflexivity in the Pornographic Films of Candide Royalle. Sexualities 6(3-4), 310-324. A redemptive reading of these particular films which aim to overcome some of the barriers to womens enjoyment of pornography. Subjects the films to classic media analysis as does Dyer (below). Bridges, A, Bergner, R and Hesson-McInnes, M (2003) Romantic Partners Use of Pornography: Its Significance for Women. Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy 29, 1-14. Confirms the findings of Shaw (see below) but using a classic psychological approach involving the construction of a Pornography Distress Scale (based on previous studies). When applied to a sample of women, a significant minority confirmed they were distressed by their partners use of online pornography. Church Gibson, P and Gibson, R (eds.) (1993) Dirty Looks: women, pornography, power. London: BFI Publishing. A collection of feminist writings opposing the criminalisation of the consumption of pornography. Contributions include Segal on the difficulties of establishing evidence of harm,
24
McClintock on the subversive potentials of sado-masochist pornography, and Straayer on the liberationist performances by Annie Sprinkle. During, S (ed.) (1993) The Cultural Studies Reader. London and New York: Routledge. Includes a rather abstract piece by Ross on the pleasures of pornography. Dyer, R (2002) The Culture of Queers. London and New York: Routledge. Includes a chapter on gay pornography intended to reclaim it as genuinely cinematic and engaging (Dyer is a famous film theorist). Horkheimer, M and Adorno, T (1979) Dialectic of Enlightenment. London: Verso. Contains an aside on the work of de Sade and his libertarian claims for pornography. Dismisses these claims as offering an illusory individuality and freedom. Kibby, M and Costello, B (2001) Between the Image and the Act: Interactive Sex Entertainment on the Internet. Sexualities 4(3), 353-369. After a review of the debate, the authors argue that interactive sexual encounters (organised through CU-SeeMe technology) can destabilise the normal forms associated with the consumption of pornography, offering new liberationist possibilities. Marcus, S (1977) Other Victorians: a study of sexuality and pornography in midnineteenth century England. New York: New American Library. A classic account of Victorian written pornography and its literary failings. Much cited as a source for the criticism that pornography can only ever develop boring and repetitive narrative forms (challenged by Dyer above). Marcuse, H (1968) One-Dimensional Man. London: Sphere. Despite the overwhelming conventional view of this classic as an apologetic for 1960s sexual permissiveness, the book actually attacks commercialised and commodified Playboy Culture. Russell, D (2003) Nadine Strossen: The Pornography Industry's Wet Dream. [online] http://www.dianarussell.com/Strossen.html. A feminist counter to the liberationist arguments about pornography made by another feminist. Shaw, S (1999) Men's leisure and women's lives: the impact of pornography on women. Leisure Studies 18, 197-212. Some qualitative and small-scale research on women's attitudes and their fears and dislikes of male use of pornography. Young, M (2002) Sexuality and the Internet. Science as Culture 11(2), 215-233. A general discussion about the use of the Internet for sexual and erotic purposes, including some clinical case-studies and a user survey. A useful survey of the cases for and against pornography.
25
Race Race emerged as a topic in the study of leisure with some classic discussions of the representation of people of different races in coverage of and in participation in sport, films, and television. Much of the work discusses whether or not there are moves towards less intolerant and stereotyped representation, and more equal participation. More generally, there are debates about racialised common-sense ways of understanding social differences in sport and leisure. This topic, like others, can be sensitive, since it is clearly interwoven with senses of personal identity. Alvarado, M and Thompson, J (eds.) (1990) The Media Reader. London: BFI Publications. Has a chapter by Hall on the ways in which black people have been depicted in various racist formulations on TV and in film. Back, L, Crabbe, T and Solomos, J (1999) Beyond the Racist/Hooligan Couplet: race, social theory and football culture. British Journal of Sociology 50(3), 419-442. A very useful survey of the research on racism and on hooliganism leads to a discussion of their interrelation and to the sources of non-hooligan racism. Policy implications follow. Carrington, B and McDonald, I (2001) Race, Sport and British Society. London: Routledge. A sustained account of racism in British sport. Summarises and extends the earlier work on the dubious nature of the association between black people and sporting success. Cashmore, E (1987) The Logic of Racism. London: Allen and Unwin. One of the best accounts of everyday racism in British culture, based on some ethnographic interviews, with different variants according to social class. CCCS (1982) The Empire Strikes Back: race and racism in 70s Britain. London: Hutchinson. A collection of essays by black students of cultural studies, including Gilroy, on the undertheorised nature of race in the usual work. Chambers, I (1985) Urban Rhythms: Popular Music and Popular Culture. London: Macmillan. Offers a (now dated?) history of popular music in Britain, including the influence of black music and its cycles of innovation and incorporation. Davis, R (2003) Creating Jim Crow: In-Depth Essay. [online] http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/creating2.htm. On the US construction of black identity in the figure of Jim Crow. Frith, S (1983) Sound Effects: youth, leisure and the politics of rock and roll. London: Constable and Company Ltd. Includes sections on black music and suggests that popular music is a relatively licensed area for black people. A useful source of comparison to the work on black people in sport.
26
Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture Hall, S, Critcher, C, Jefferson, T, Clarke, J and Roberts, B. (1978) Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order. London: Macmillan. A classic study of, among other things, the ways in which black people are symbolised as threats to social order, especially via moral panics about street crime. Outlines an influential Marxist version of the notion of moral panic and the role of the State and the media. Harrison, L, Harrison, K and Moore, L (2002) Afro-American Racial Identity and Sport. Sport, Education and Society 7(2), 121-133. A social-psychological account of the stages in the development of black identity in the US. A discussion of the power of this identity in connection with sports and other allegiances. Hebdige, D (1979) Subcultures - The Meaning of Style. London: Methuen and Co. The best-selling account of youth subcultures of the 1970s. Includes an argument that black youth culture played a major, if not always understood, part in the developments discussed, and that race was as important an influence as social class on predominantly white subcultures. Holland, B (1997) Surviving Leisure-time Racism: the burden of racial harassment on Britains black footballers. Leisure Studies 16(4), 261-277. A participant-observation and interview-based study charting the unusually substantial burden of abuse faced by black players from football fans, and examining the effects on those players. Hooks, B (1999) The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators. In S Thornham (ed.) Feminist Film Theory: a reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. A discussion of the specific critical reaction of black viewers to Hollywood movies. An extension to the usual views of passive spectatorship based on white people as normal. Jarvie, G and Reid, I (1997) Race Relations, the Sociology of Sport and the New Politics of Race and Racism. Leisure Studies 16(4), 211-220. An important contribution to understanding new and more complex forms of racism. Julien, I and Mercer, K (1988) Introduction De Margin and De Centre. Screen 29(4), 211. An introduction to a special edition on race and the cinema illustrating the changing ways in which black people have been represented on screen. McCarthy, D, Jones, R and Potrac, P (2003) Constructing Images and Interpreting Realities. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 38(2), 217-238. A classic gramscian analysis based on a close analysis of recent TV sports commentary relating to black players. Finds an absence of open racism, but more subtle forms of (hegemonic) discrimination. Sivanandan, A (1990) Communities of Resistance Writings on Black Struggles for Socialism. London: Verso. A splendid polemic on various approaches to race, including a critique of gramscian
27
approaches. Describes life on the front line. Ends with an endorsement of activist antiracism. St Louis, B (2004) Sport and Common Sense Racial Science. Leisure Studies 23(1), 31-46. (This is a special edition devoted to race). A critique of common-sense racist analyses of the success of black people in sport. Racist accounts are critiqued methodologically, as positivist and ideological. The article helps raise serious doubts about the low-level racism often encountered among students. Van Dijk, T (1987) Communicating Racism: ethnic prejudice in thought and talk. London: Sage Publications Inc. A substantial study of the structure of racist arguments in the mass media. Offers detailed methodological procedures to analyse racist discourse from an unusually critical ethnomethodological stance.
Shopping Shopping was once notoriously ignored as a significant leisure activity until feminists put it on the agenda. The work displays contrasting options to explain the pleasures of shopping. On one hand, shops are well aware of the leisure possibilities and do much to incorporate themes and designs into shopping environments to persuade people to relax, feel free, and therefore consume. On the other, shoppers are far from being easily manipulated and can impose their own meanings on the activity and its surroundings. Since city tourism almost inevitably involves designing or regulating shopping areas, there are some policy implications too. Falk P and Campbell C (eds.) (1997) The Shopping Experience. London: Sage Publications. A collection that includes an unusual ethnographic study of the pleasures of shopping in Helsinki: shoppers follow their own agendas, not the strictly commercial one. Gardner, C and Shepherd, J (1989) Consuming Passion: the rise of retail culture. London: Unwin Hyman. A classic account of the emergence of shopping as a leisure activity and the role of the design industry in adding values to the process. Gorter, C, Nijkamp, P and Klamer, P (2003) The Attraction Force of Out-of-Town Shopping Malls: a case-study on run-fun shopping in the Netherlands. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geographie 94(2), 219-229. An article (in English) on the economic benefits and main motives for shoppers in using outof-town malls, with some policy implications. Gottdiener M (1995) Postmodern Semiotics: material culture and the forms of postmodern life. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Critical commentary on arenas for the display of the postmodern self, including Disney theme parks and shopping malls.
28
Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture Woodward, I, Emmison, M and Smith, P (2000) Consumerism, Disorientation and Postmodern Space: a modest test of an immodest theory. British Journal of Sociology 51(2), 339-354. A sceptical sociological piece testing empirically the view that postmodern buildings, especially shopping malls, induce disorientation and thus increase vulnerability to consumerism. Shoppers are quite capable of imposing their own routes and purposes.
Theoretical Approaches A number of general theoretical approaches have inspired work in this field, especially the ones below. Distinctions between subsections will be slightly arbitrary since some works draw on several theoretical traditions. Theoretical differences within broad traditions different types of Marxism, feminism or semiotics, for example have not been highlighted in the categorisation. General approaches also have characteristic methods in the most general sense, although more explicitly empirical methods are reserved for another subsection (above). (See also the first two sections in the Resource Guide to Leisure in Society for some useful general textbooks summarising the main theoretical approaches.) Feminism(s) (see also Gender) Aitchison, C (2000) Poststructural Feminist Theories of Representing Others: their response to the crisis in leisure studies' discourse. Leisure Studies 19, 127-144. Outlines the contribution of poststructuralist feminism in making theoretical advances while avoiding excessive theoreticism. Offers case studies in tourism (exotic locations as Other), and work-leisure relations. Aitchison, C (2001) Gender and Leisure Research: The Codification of Knowledge. Leisure Sciences 23(1), 1-19. Examines the apparent exclusion of women from journals for leisure and tourism and the impact on the construction and legitimation of academic knowledge in the field. Surveys and explains the development of different sorts of feminist work in leisure. Beezer, A (1995) Women and Adventure Travel Tourism. New Formations 21, 119130. Summarises some female travel writing, and critiques male heroics in male travel writing in the 19th century. Critiques modern adventure holidays and their search for (male) postmodern forms of authenticity. Critcher, C, Bramham, P and Tomlinson, A (eds.) (1995) Sociology of Leisure: a Reader. London: E & F N Spon. A useful general text. The chapter by Green et al. also offers a basic feminist critique of official statistics on participation and discusses an alternative methodology. Deem, R (1986) All Work and No Play. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. A classic early piece exploring the impact of gendered work including unpaid domestic labour on the leisure activities of women. Includes an empirical study.
29
Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture Deem, R (1999) How do we get out of the ghetto? Strategies for research on gender and leisure for the 21st century. Leisure Studies 18(3), 161-77. Discusses the crisis in work on gender and leisure and suggests some ways forward for feminist analysis. Free, M and Hughson, J (2003) Settling Accounts with Hooligans. Gender Blindness in Football Supporter Subculture Research. Men and Masculinities 6(2), 136-155. Insightful feminist re-reading of some accounts of football supporting based on McRobbies settling of accounts with subculture theory (below) and aimed at restoring the significance of gender relations as well as social class in this field. Fullagar, S (2002) Narratives of Travel: desire and the movement of feminine subjectivity. Leisure Studies 21(1), 57-74. A poetic and personal account weaving together travel diary extracts and high philosophy to provide a poststructuralist feminist account of travel as encountering real otherness. Hargreaves, J (ed.) (1982) Sport Culture and Ideology. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. A useful critical collection of pieces including chapters on women in sport. McRobbie, A (1981) Settling Accounts with Subcultures. In T Bennett, G Martin, C Mercer and J Woollacott (eds.) Culture, Ideology and Social Process. London: Batsford Academic and Educational Ltd, in association with the Open University Press. A substantial feminist critique of the work by Hebdige and Willis on youth subcultures. McRobbie, A (1991) Feminism and Youth Culture: from Jackie to Just Seventeen. London: Macmillan. A collection of early articles, including the work on teenage sexual identity and the influence of girls magazines. McRobbie, A (1994) Postmodernism and Popular Culture. London: Routledge. Discusses the impact of postmodernist critique on feminist analysis, illustrated with a range of case studies including dance. Silva, E (2000) The Cook, the Cooker and the Gendering of the Kitchen. The Sociological Review 48(4), 612-629. Discusses the effects of technological change in cooking on gender relations and vice-versa. Uses actor network theory and post-structuralist feminism. Wearing, B and Wearing, S (1996) Refocusing the Tourist Experience: the flneur and the choraster. Leisure Studies 15, 229-43. Makes a strong case for feminist deconstruction of leading concepts in tourism research including the flaneur and the gaze. Uses the Kristevan notion of the chora to stress alternative conceptions emphasising human interactions and existential openness.
30
Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture Womens Study Group (1978) Women Take Issue. London: Hutchinson. A classic collection of attempts to articulate the relations between Marxism and feminism against the background of work at the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. Specific chapters on femininity in girls youth subcultures (McRobbie); womens magazines (Winship); romantic novels (Harrison). Figurationalism (historical sociology or process sociology) Dunning E, Murphy, P and Williams, J (1986) Spectator Violence at Football Matches: towards a sociological explanation. British Journal of Sociology 37(2), 221-244. An early piece, criticising the existing official and academic explanations of football hooliganism and introducing the notion of segmentation to explain the shifting nature of hooligan groups. Links to the overall civilisation thesis and explains the significance of working class masculinity. Dunning, E and Waddington, I (2003) Sport as a Drug and Drugs in Sport. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 38(3), 351-368. Develops the notion of an established-outsider figuration to explain the ambivalence towards sporting drug-users, considers Eliass work on German leisure communities, and critically discusses some implications for the use of sport to counter drug-use among the young. Elias, N and Dunning, E (1986) Quest for Excitement: Sport and Leisure in the Civilising Process. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd. A classic statement of the figurational case that sport and leisure involve the development of more civilised procedures to manage tension balances, with historical examples. Leisure is defined as a matter of tension balance rather than as not work. Mennell, S (1985) All Manners of Food: eating and taste in England and France from the middle ages to the present. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Critically discusses other approaches to the study of food and provides a detailed figurational analysis of the emergence of the modern diet and of modern eating disorders. Mennell, S (1992) Norbert Elias: an Introduction. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. An introduction to the main themes in Eliass work, including the work on the emergence of political figurations and on table manners. Rojek, C (1986) Problems of Involvement and Detachment in the Writings of Norbert Elias. British Journal of Sociology XXXVII (4), 584-96. A critique of the key methodological convention of detachment in figurational work. Rojek, C (ed.) (1989) Leisure for Leisure. London: Macmillan. A collection of pieces based on different approaches to leisure, including a short account by Dunning on the emergence of fox-hunting and football hooliganism.
31
Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture Tuck, J (2003) The Men in White. Reflections on Rugby Union, the Media and Englishness. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 38(2), 177-199. An analysis of the media coverage of the England rugby team during the 1995 World Cup, with possibilities for discussing the 2003 victory. Uses Eliass concept of habitus and the national habitus code, the relationships between the established and outsiders, and the connections between I, we and they images. Figurational and Marxist approaches are combined. Functionalism Alexander, J (ed.) (1988) Durkheimian Sociology: cultural studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. An attempt to reinstate Durkheims work on religion, social solidarities and rituals. Suggestive hints about applications in the chapters on media events and friendship. Le Breton, D (2000) Playing Symbolically with Death in Extreme Sports. Body and Society 6(1), 1-11. Lyrical descriptions of the ecstatic pleasures of extreme sports and ordeals. Discusses 'flow', but prefers his own (Durkheimian?) account to do with relating egos to constraints. MacCannell, D (1989) The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (revised edn). New York: Shocken Books. This classic account of tourism and modernity arguably contains clear echoes of Durkheims work on religion, such as in the argument that tourism stands for society. There are other theoretical perspectives used too, of course. Parker, S (1983) Leisure and Work. London: George Allen and Unwin. A classic introduction to the social role of leisure which reviews some basic functionalist accounts, including Dumazediers, and then operationalises them to undertake some research on specific work/leisure patterns and their connections with organisational variables. PAT 10 (2003) [online] http://www.culture.gov.uk The UK Governments current policies on the functions of sport and leisure, including their role in social integration. Seeing these policies as functionalist can encourage critical discussion of neglected issues like dysfunctions? Percy, M and Taylor, R (1997) Something for the Weekend, Sir? Leisure, ecstasy and identity in football and contemporary religion. Leisure Studies 16, 37-49. Analyses the religiosity of football supporting, drawing on Durkheimian notions of religion. The term ecstasy suggests other applications too, such as clubbing or flow? Prideaux, S (2001) New Labour, Old Functionalism: The Underlying Contradictions of Welfare Reform in the US and the UK. Social Policy and Administration 35(1), 85-115. Detects functionalist assumptions in US and UK welfare policy, and can be used to invite the same analysis of leisure policy.
32
Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture Rojek, C (2000) Leisure and Culture. London: Macmillan Press Ltd. Critically discusses Durkheim and other functionalists to locate modern leisure practices. Marxism(s) Adorno T (1991) The Culture Industry. Selected Essays on Mass Culture. (Edited and with an Introduction by Bernstein). London: Routledge. Contains chapters on free time, the culture industry, and on film, television and music. The approach is best seen (initially) as a version of the commodification thesis, showing how the relations of capitalism deeply affect leisure and culture. Althusser, L (1977) Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an investigation). In L Althusser (1977) 'Lenin and Philosophy' and Other Essays. London: New Left Books. The best-known of Althussers writings on ideology, outlining the hailing mechanism or the process of interpellation which has been much used to understand the construction of individual identity in ideological state apparatuses including the cinema. Andrews, D (2002) Coming to Terms with Cultural Studies. Journal of Sport and Social Issues 26(1), 110-117. An attempt to rework the gramscian concept of 'articulation' as a central concept to rescue cultural studies from its vulgarisers and reinstate its privileged position. Armstrong, P (2001) Styles of illusion. The Sociological Review, 155-173. A critique of gramscian styles of argument directed at Du Gay on 'enterprise culture'. Proposes more conventional sociological evidence-based studies instead. Benjamin, W (1992). Illuminations. London: Fontana Press. A collection of writings including the influential piece on art in the age of mechanical reproduction. Clarke, J and Critcher, C (1985) The Devil Makes Work Leisure in Capitalist Britain. London: Macmillan. An historical account of the emergence of modern leisure seen in terms of stages in class struggle (with its settlements and crises), especially the struggle for hegemony. Critiques earlier contributions to leisure theory. Tries to expose the constraints on consumer choice. Corner, J and Harvey, S (eds.) (1991) Enterprise and Heritage: crosscurrents of national culture. Routledge: London. A critical analysis of Thatcherite enterprise culture with examples of its effects on the heritage industry (including heritage films). Includes an essay by Hewison reasserting Marxist against postmodernist perspectives (following Jameson).
33
Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture Critcher, C (1982) Football Since the War. In B Waites, et al. (eds.) (1982) Popular Culture: Past and Present. Beckenham: Croom Helm in association with the Open University Press. An account of the commercialisation of the game with a subsequent loss of control and reduced participation by working class fans. Critcher, C (1992) Is There Anything on the Box? Leisure Studies and Media Studies. Leisure Studies 11(2), 97-122. Outlines some research themes in (Marxist) media studies that might be pursued in leisure studies too, including patterns of ownership, media forms, and the impact of technology. Critcher, C (2000) Still Raving: social reaction to Ecstasy. Leisure Studies 19, 145-162. A gramscian commentary on approaches to understanding rave primarily in terms of a moral panic defined in Marxist terms. Critically considers risk society approaches and ethnographic studies too. Fjellman, S (1992) Vinyl Leaves: Walt Disney World and America. Oxford: Westview Press. Sustained critique of the ideology of the Disney theme park, drawing on several Marxist traditions including Jamesons work on the economic dimensions of postmodernism. Hall, S (1977) Culture, the Media and the Ideology-Effect. In J Curran, M Gurevitch and J Wollacott (eds.) Mass Communication and Society. London: Edward Arnold Publishers Ltd, in association with the Open University Press. One of the best accounts of the workings of ideology (based on Gramsci and Poulantzas) and the role played by the mass media. Hall, S (1980) Encoding/Decoding. In S Hall, D Hobson, A Lowe and P Willis (eds.) Culture Media and Language. London: Hutchinson. Another highly influential piece on how the media work to both maintain their particular notions of effective representation while also setting an agenda which privileges dominant ideological codes. This piece led to early work on the role of the audience in decoding media messages, but only in limited ways. Hall, S and Jefferson, T (eds.) (1976) Resistance Through Rituals. London: Hutchinson. A classic collection of early studies of youth cultures in Britain as doubly articulated with youth and social class together with a long theoretical introduction arguing the case for Marxist perspectives, and some methodological asides. An early piece by McRobbie tries to make the case for gender as a further articulation. Hargreaves, J (1986) Sport, Power and Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press. A critical account of sport, rational recreation and the fitness craze of the 1980s as a disciplinary apparatus (which provides challenging material for class discussion). Rather a hybrid of themes from Gramsci and Foucault, who were seen as compatible in those days.
34
Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture Harris, D (1992) From Class Struggle to the Politics of Pleasure. London: Routledge. A polemical and controversial critique of British cultural studies, including its applications to leisure and popular culture. Contains an account of material from the Open University course (see below), including its television components. One of many reviews of cultural studies but definitely the best one! Horkheimer, M and Adorno, T (1979) Dialectic of Enlightenment. London: Verso Books. An analysis of the commodification and reification of culture and science, including the essay on the culture industry that is so often the starting point for analyses of consumerism and the ideological effects of the mass media. Jameson, F (1991) Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. London: Verso. Wide-ranging and occasionally rather dense series of essays on modern popular culture (including mass media). Famous and much used as a theoretical resource to beat off the challenge of postmodernism and replace it with an analysis of cultural characteristics like pastiche as a function of the market in late capitalism. Open University (1982) Popular Culture (U203). Milton Keynes: The Open University Press. A comprehensive development of a gramscian take on popular culture, ranging from Bond films through seaside holidays to sport and popular music. Acknowledged as the foundation for many subsequent cultural studies courses. May be out of print now, but second-hand copies can still be acquired. Readers for the course include: o Bennett, T, Boyd-Bowman, S, Mercer, C and Wollacott, J (eds.) (1981) Popular Television and Film. London: BFI Publications. o Bennett, T, Martin, G, Mercer, C and Woollacott, J (eds.) (1981) Culture, Ideology and Social Process. London: Batsford Academic and Educational Ltd, in association with the Open University Press. o Waites, B, Bennett, T and Martin, G (eds.) Popular Culture: Past and Present. London: Croom Helm in association with the Open University Press. Roberts, K and Parsell, G (1994) Youth cultures in Britain: the middle class take-over. Leisure Studies 13, 33-48. A useful continuation of the pluralist critique (see Roberts in Critcher et al. 1995) which says that social class is not closely associated with particular leisure pursuits. In this case, youth cultures are adopted principally as a style by middle class groups, according to some survey data. Tomlinson, A (1989) Whose Side Are They On? Leisure studies and cultural studies in Britain. Leisure Studies 8(2), 97-106. Makes a case for cultural studies as a source of critique of vocational trends in leisure studies.
35
Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture Tomlinson, A (ed.) (1990) Consumption, Identity and Style. London: Comedia and Routledge. Critical accounts of consumerism, with a good introduction by Tomlinson on various Marxist approaches. A discussion-provoking chapter on vegetarianism and its paradoxes in capitalism. Whannel, G (1992) Fields in Vision: television, sport and cultural transformation. London: Routledge. On the impact of television as driven by commercial agendas and commodification. Good case studies. Williams, C (2002) A Critical Evaluation of the Commodification Thesis. The Sociological Review, 525-42. A discussion of the role of unpaid and voluntary work and its continued importance, used to deny the idea that culture and leisure are increasingly commodified. Issues are also raised for the work/leisure distinction and for post-fordist economies. Wood, B (1998) Stuart Halls Cultural Studies and the Problem of Hegemony. British Journal of Sociology 49(3), 399-414. A useful collection of the critiques of inconsistency in the definitions and use of the term hegemony, stemming from the ambiguities of discursive versions of the term. Semiotic(s) Armstrong, E (1996) The Commodified 23, or, Michael Jordan as Text. Sociology of Sport Journal 13, 325-43. A useful demonstration of the use of diacritical (binary) elements in analysing the symbolic significance of Jordan, basketball and sport generally as a mythical explanation of the culture of modernity. Badcock, C (1975) Levi-Strauss: structuralism and social theory. London: Hutchinson. Reclaims Levi-Strauss for general social theory. A very clear analysis of the work on myths (which is probably the most cited applied aspect of the work). Barthes, R (1973) Mythologies. London: Paladin. A classic set of short essays on cultural themes and examples, using concepts of connotation and denotation and operating with a Marxist notion of myth as ideology in capitalism. Very readable and engaging. Barthes, R (1975) S/Z. London: Jonathan Cape. Work from a later period focusing on more specifically textual effects and describing major narrative codes at work in novels and films. Long case study of Balzacs novel Sarrasine, which is also relevant for discussions of gender and identity. Barthes, R (1977) Image-Music-Text. London: Fontana/Collins. A collection of essays with a useful introduction on plaisir and jouissance. Essays include arguments on the difference between works and texts, the need for a new semiology in
36
global capitalism, introducing the post-structuralist case, and analysis of narrative structures (with Bond as an example). Baudrillard, J (1983) Simulations. New York: Semiotext(e). Illustrates the cultural history of representation heading towards simulation and hyperreality. Many contemporary examples including some fertile remarks on the realism of Disney theme parks. Chandler, D (2001) Semiotics: the basics. London: Routledge. An excellent and comprehensive discussion, largely with examples in literature, based on a highly successful website (see below). Cook, P (ed.) (1985) The Cinema Book. London: BFI Publications. A definitive collection of analytic works and film clips in the BFI archives. Discusses a number of analytic approaches including semiotics (extended into the connected issue of film narrative). Culler, J (1976) Structuralist Poetics. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Arguably, still the best general account of French structuralism and its critics. Discusses Barthes on fashion writing as one useful example. Dann, G. (1996) The Language of Tourism: A Sociolinguistic Perspective. Wallingford: CAB International. Considers a range of resources in socio-linguistics not just semiotics. Comprehensive range of examples. Eco, U (1979) The Role of the Reader: explorations in the semiotics of texts. London: Hutchinson. Develops his open semiotics and offers a very readable and straightforward example in the narratives of Bond novels (deploying a series of binaries, and plot development as moves in the game). A student-friendly example which can be seen as a demonstration of the power of semiotic analysis to uncover the Bond formula. Eco, U (1987) Travels in Hyperreality. London: Picador. Analyses of various tourist sights in the USA and elsewhere, including Disneyland in California and encounters with otherness in Brazil. Informed by an introductory piece about the effects of modernity in constructing hyperreal worlds with excessive and unmanageable strategic communication, and a possible Mediaeval future. Goldman, R and Papson, S (1994) Advertising in the Age of Hypersignification. Theory, Culture and Society 11, 23-53. The authors of the text on Nike culture. Focused on advertising, but discusses what semiotic analysis of advertising should now do in hyper-reality. Many interesting analyses of television advertisements including those for sportswear.
37
Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture Gottdiener, M (1995) Postmodern Semiotics: material culture and the forms of postmodern life. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. An early but still useful demonstration of Peircian semiotics used to make sense of and critique postmodern developments such as shopping malls or Disney theme parks. James, A (1982) Confections, Concoctions and Conceptions. In B Waites, T Bennett and G Martin (eds.) Popular Culture: Past and Present. London: Croom Helm in association with the Open University Press. An insightful semiotic analysis of junk food (childrens sweets) and its cultural significance in inverting the binaries of adult food values. James, A (1990) The Good, the Bad and the Delicious: the role of confectionery in British society. The Sociological Review 38(4), 366-85. A Levi-Straussian analysis of the cultural significance of adult confectionery, its mythical status and its important mediating role in the binary classifications at work in the adult diet. Clear implications for social policy too. Leach, E (1970) Levi-Strauss. London: Fontana/Collins. A short and general commentary for Anglo sceptics, with the main examples well illustrated kinship, cooking and myth. Levi-Strauss, C (1977) Structural Anthropology. Vol. 1, London: Peregrine Books. The first chapter sets out very clearly the claims of Levi-Strausss structuralist method (based on structural linguistics). The main examples are anthropological ones, unfortunately, but the method is demonstrated well. Lindquist, G (2001) Transforming Signs. Iconicity and Indexicality in Russian Healing and Magic. Ethnos 66(2), 181-206. On the margins of leisure studies with this example (although similar analyses might be pursued with New Age beliefs or recreational spiritualism), but a clear example of Peircian semiotics in use to understand the belief systems of Russian magi and their diagnostic strategies. MacCannell, D (1992) Empty Meeting Grounds: the tourist papers. London: Routledge. Draws on a range of theoretical resources including semiotics (and Durkheim see functionalism), and develops a critical commentary on postmodernism. A useful range of critical examples. The chapter on spectacles critically evaluates Peirce in particular. Marin, L (1977) Disneyland: A degenerative utopia. Glyph 1(1), 50-66. A much-cited if obscurely published structural analysis of the layout of Disneyland showing how the very buildings and streets express a negative utopia with all the liberating possibilities leading back inexorably to the commercialism of Main Street.
38
Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture Seiter, E (1987) Semiotics and Television. In R Allen (ed.) (1987) Channels of Discourse. London: Methuen & Co Ltd. A clear introductory review of different semiotic approaches and some useful applications to TV analysis. Probably the highpoint of semiotic analysis in television studies. Selwyn, T (ed.) (1996) The Tourist Image: myths and myth-making in tourism. New York: John Wiley and Sons. A range of analyses including Danns work on the semiotics of tourist brochures, based on what he calls a dilletante approach, drawing on a range of theoretical sources including French semiotics. Wennerlind, C (2001) Money Talks, But What Is It Saying? The Semiotics of Money and Social Control. Journal of Economic Issues. XXXV(3), 557-575. A basic review of semiotic principles leads to some effective critical work on money as a symbolic system. Useful for students to cut their critical teeth on commodification.
Virtual Leisure This collection of pieces explores the leisure uses of computers and electronic media. For some commentators, browsing the Web, surfing the Net or playing electronic games offers the usual paradoxical pleasures and risks of commercialised leisure. There is also a distinct group of enthusiasts who believe that really new and liberating leisure possibilities are raised by the new media, however, and they have been much cited and discussed. At the most general level, the implications are pursued into discussions of new forms of social relations and personal identities on offer in virtual reality. Baudrillard, J (1983) Simulations. London: Semiotext(e). An early account of the possibilities, rather than focused on cyberleisure as such. Good on hyperreality, simulation, and the ecstasy of communication. Braidottie, R (2003) [1996] Cyberfeminism with a difference. New Formations 29, 9-25, and [online] http://www.let.uu.nl/womens_studies/. Survey of the possibilities for feminist practice in the new conditions (the Net is seen as a typical embodiment of modernity). Wrapped in a discussion of various forms of embodiment. Chesher, C (1998?) Colonising Virtual Reality. Construction of the Discourse of Virtual Reality, 1984-1992. Cultronix 1(1) [online] http://eserver.org/cultronix/chesher/. A good sceptical account of the emergence of discourses about virtual reality, which are more important in its success and popularity than the technology itself. Combinations of economic, technological and cultural/ideological impulses are detailed, and claims questioned. Griffiths, M, Davies, M and Chappell, D (2004) On-line Computer Gaming: a comparison of adolescent and adult gamers. Journal of Adolescence 27, 87-96. This study pursues a particular kind of game - multi-player online - and gathers some basic demographics about players. They seem involved and committed, maybe even addicted.
39
Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture Haraway, D (2003) [1991] A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and SocialistFeminism in the Late Twentieth Century. [online] http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto.html. The classic statement of feminist optimism about the possibilities of the Net and the cyborg identities it offers, given suitable activism. A series of sections discuss a wide range of issues facing feminism in modernity in a highly polemical and engaging style. Herring, S (2003a) [1993] Gender and Democracy in Computer-Mediated Communication. [online] http://ella.slis.indiana.edu/~herring/ejc.txt. A study testing the claims that Internet interaction can involve successful attempts to disguise the gender of the participants. Offers a technique to identify male and female interaction. Marshall, J (2003) The Sexual Life of Cyber-Savants. The Australian Journal of Anthropology 15(2), 229-248. An account of the contradictions and pleasures, the interaction of fantasy and authenticity and the relation of offline and online worlds in 'netsex' via casual interaction among academics. Argues that netsex is really about interpersonal intimacy. Miah, A (2000) Virtually Nothing: re-evaluating the significance of cyberspace. Leisure Studies 19(3), 211-224. A generally sceptical account of the liberating possibilities of cyberspace, which amount to the familiar limited options of all escape experiences. Detailed examination of different forms of online interaction. Shields, R (ed.) (1996) Cultures of Internet: virtual spaces, real histories, living bodies. London: Sage Publications Inc. An early attempt to research the impact of online communication on communities in the Caribbean. Thomsen, S, Straubhaar J, Bolyard, D (1998) Ethnomethodology and the Study of Online Communities: Exploring the Cyber Streets. A paper presented to IRIS'98 (Internet Research and Information for Social Sciences) [online] http://www.sosig.ac.uk/iriss/welcome.html. Explores some issues about how to research online communities, pins down some of the specifics, and adapts techniques from ethnography and ethnomethodology. Thornton, A (2003) Does Internet Create Democracy? [online] http://www.zip.com.au/~athornto/. An updated Masters thesis reviewing the possibilities of the emergence of a new public sphere and experience of democracy. Among other theorists, Habermas is reviewed and applied. Turkle, S (1995) Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon and Schuster. A classic and generally optimistic account of the possibilities and prospects for personal identity.
40
Work-Leisure Relationships One of the classic topics in leisure studies, stemming from an early conceptualisation of leisure as something that was not-work. This is still a common starting point for students. The actual relations between work and leisure can be more complex, however, in both directions; leisure activity is quite often like work or dominated by it, and work is often interpenetrated by spells of leisure, even if this is only in the form of daydreaming. This interpenetration of formerly distinct fields is characteristic of (post)modernity. For some people, work and leisure are inseparable, as in Stebbins influential discussion of serious leisure. What follows is the need to think out what it actually is that constitutes leisure. This is not just an abstract task as the examples above illustrate, consuming can become leisure, and perhaps even paid work can be, with obvious personal and economic benefits. On the other hand, the last refuges from work may be increasingly subject to colonisation and commodification. Adorno T (1991) Free Time. In T Adorno (1991) The Culture Industry: Selected essays on mass culture (edited and with an Introduction by J Bernstein). London: Routledge. Argues that free time is an ideological notion supporting the social relations of capitalism. The other essays in the book suggest that popular culture has been commodified. Bramham, P (2002) Rojek, the Sociological Imagination and Leisure. Leisure Studies 21, 221-234. A useful survey of the emergence of Rojeks perspectives on leisure theory, including the work-leisure relation (a central critical theme in Rojeks oeuvre). Csikszentmihalyi, M (1975) Beyond Boredom and Anxiety. San Francisco: Josey-Bass. The classic work on the concept of flow and an argument that it can be generated in both work and leisure activities. Jones, I (2000) A Model of Serious Leisure Identification: the case of football fandom. Leisure Studies 19, 283-289. Uses the work on serious leisure to explain the actual mechanisms of commitment that keep fans going through adversity. Jones, I and Syman, G (2001) Lifelong Learning as Serious Leisure: policy, practice and potential. Leisure Studies 20, 269-283. A review of the possibilities, based on Stebbins work. Interventionist aims lead to a list of the claimed benefits of serious leisure and a plea for the design of lifelong learning to help people develop an interest. Parker, S (1983) Leisure and Work. London: George Allen and Unwin. A foundational piece on the ways in which work variables are linked with leisure patterns. Can lead to discussion about recent changes in work patterns and their effects. Raisborough, J (1999) Research Note: the concept of serious leisure and womens experiences of the Sea Cadet Corps. Leisure Studies 18, 67-71. Suggests that Stebbinss conception is gendered and that women volunteers conceptualise their activity in different and traditionally gendered terms.
41
Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture Ritzer, G (1999) Enchanting a Disenchanted World: revolutionizing the means of consumption. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press. A useful contribution to what is in effect the commodification approach, although using Weberian terms. A good illustration of the maxim that one persons leisure is another persons work. Rojek, C (ed.) (1989) Leisure for Leisure. London: Macmillan. Includes the piece by Moorhouse, written as a critique of Parker, featuring examples of what would now be called serious leisure. Stebbins, R (2001) Serious Leisure. Society 38(4), 53-58. A brief and revised version of the famous and fertile argument.
42
GUIDE
TO
IN
TERNET
ESOURCES
This is a small sample of what is available. It is often better to use a search engine and enter the titles or keywords, since URLs are liable to change. Andrea Dworkin Web Site http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/ Personal site of the feminist writer and anti-pornography campaigner. AnnieSprinkle.org http://www.anniesprinkle.org Home page of the sexual liberationist and performance artist. Barbie Bazaar http://www.barbiebazaar.com A guide to the world of the adult Barbie collector. Possibly an example of serious leisure, an insight into the adult pleasures of Barbie in use. Barbie Liberation Organization http://www.sniggle.net/barbie.php Details of the famous feminist organisation that set out to subvert Barbie culture. Body Modification Ezine http://www.bmezine.com A useful site which details fans views and accounts. BUBL http://bubl.ac.uk A substantial archive of useful material, such as writings on football fandom. Centre for the Sociology of Sport http://www.le.ac.uk/so/css/ A major archive for figurational and other work on sport and leisure based at Leicester University, incorporating the Sir Norman Chester Centre. Chandler, D - Semiotics for beginners http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/semiotic.html The best and most comprehensive online resource. Christians Boycotting Disney http://www.christianitytoday.com/ An unusual right-wing critique of Disney values. Clean Clothes Campaign http://www.cleanclothes.org/companies/disney.htm An anti-corporation website exposing the conditions under which leisure clothing is produced. Cultural Studies Central http://www.culturalstudies.net/ A substantial archive of useful articles. Department for Culture, Media and Sport http://www.culture.gov.uk/sporthttp://www.culture.gov.uk/sport UK Government site. Directory Search http://www.directory-search.org/?c=3-1
43
An online shopping portal, just to show the possibilities and explore the pleasures. Disney Online http://disney.go.com/park/homepage/today/flash/index.html The official Company website showing what is on offer (including material on Celebration, the Disney new town). Enquire Within http://www.enquirewithin.co.nz/HINTS/skills2.htm A website devoted to the development of repertory grids techniques in qualitative research. FastnBulbous http://www.fastnbulbous.com/punk.htm A music webzine with a detailed history of punk (useful to test against the classic gramscian theories). Flneuse http://www.fotolog.net/flaneuse/ A photographic weblog by a female flaneur (who are supposed to be non-existent). Guardian Unlimited Special Report on The Millennium Dome http://www.guardian.co.uk/dome/archive An archive of press coverage of the controversial building. Harris, D - Dave Harris (and colleagues): essays, papers and courses. http://www.arasite.org/ The authors personal website contains more extended reviews (Reading Guides) of most the pieces in this Resource Guide. Herring, S http://www.slis.indiana.edu/faculty/herring/ Herrings own website with some useful articles and other publications on gender and the Net. Igrab http://www.igrab.net/ The website for gay rugby players. Illuminations. The Critical Theory Web Site. http://www.uta.edu/huma/illuminations/ An excellent collection of the old and new generation of critical theorists. Millennium Dome http://www.czajkowski.co.uk/Dome/dome_review2.htm An account of a visit. National Statistics Online http://www.statistics.gov.uk/ Newitz, A, Rubio, S and Caffrey, A - Bad Tourists at the Mall. http://eserver.org/bs/08/Newitz-Rubio-Caffrey.html A selection of essays by an American group of activist critical consumers. Oxfam Community Aid Abroad http://www.caa.org.au/campaigns/nike/ An anti-Nike website. PopCultures.Com http://www.popcultures.com A substantial archive of pieces on popular culture. Excellent set of essays on theorists.
44
QT http://www.queertheory.com An archive on queer theory. Silver Ring Thing http://www.silverringthing.com/about.html Website of the influential American movement for teenage celibacy. SOSIG http://www.sosig.ac.uk/ A large and useful UK-based social science archive with a quality filter. Baudrillard on the Web. http://intermargins.net/intermargins/TCulturalWorkshop/academia/scholar%20and%20speciali st/Baudrillard/Baudrillard%20on%20the%20Web.htm The Theory org.uk Directory http://www.theory.org.uk/directory.htm David Gauntletts useful collection of work on social and cultural theory, including queer theory. University of Sydney http://www.usyd.edu.au/su/social/elias/elias.html A collection of pieces by and on Norbert Elias. University of the Third Age http://www.u3a.org.uk A site for the growing interest in education as leisure among the retired. Virtual Office of the Surgeon General http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/ The source of many US studies of health and social life, including, in this case, recent work on obesity and lifestyle. Walkman Museum http://www.pocketcalculatorshow.com/walkman/ Shows how the designs have progressed evidence to test DuGay et al.
TE
ACHING
SOME
REFLECTIONS
A teaching strategy must clearly take into account the context provided both by the organisation and the students. In my own case, a course on Leisure and Tourism is taught at a small college, on a modular degree. A decreasing number of students choose leisure as a major. As a result, it is possible to find oneself teaching a group of students who do not even have in common an overriding interest in the academic subject. They do have extensive interests in participating in popular leisure pursuits, however, although these pursuits are also notoriously divided into 'taste publics', which can be hostile to each other. Leisure is also a topic that is widely discussed by non-academic commentators. In this specific context, it follows that the most effective course structure is likely to involve a number of features:
45
(1) The need to see academic approaches as necessarily mediated through a reception context deeply affected by personal knowledge of popular leisure and by a considerable public discussion of leisure pursuits in the mass media. The peculiar claims of academic discourse have to be constantly problematised, discussed and tested against rival discourses. Teaching materials that provoke, challenge or critique popular understandings can be particularly useful. (2) At the same time, it is important to realise that there can be personal implications arising from these discussions, that students can be hurt, demoralised, or feel personally justified by some of the academic discussions taking place. My own approach is to constantly patrol the course to make sure that topics are approached sensitively, that forms of discrimination against certain taste publics are not institutionalised, and that representatives of the most common taste publics are allowed an equal voice, insofar as I can ensure this. Ethical dilemmas can arise here, most notably in discussing illegal leisure topics. (3) Given a diverse group, flexibility in the course delivery and assessment is important, and I personally use a website and a CD version of it, together with advice about remote access to the library, as well as more conventional face-to-face teaching. The origin of the Reading Guides on my website lies in a strategy to persuade students to familiarise themselves with online articles and read them effectively. I usually let students decide for themselves how to use student-directed learning sessions. The well-known research on 'deep', 'surface' and 'strategic' approaches to learning also need to be borne in mind at the design stage. The above describes an ideal course, assuming no constraints of student characteristics, timetabling or other resources. In practice, my courses take the form of a 'shotgun' approach, featuring a variety of apparently isolated topics designed to appeal to the range of tastes in the audience. These topics are also clustered, using more theoretical themes to link them. Seeing the course as a set of isolated topics can permit the more culturally conservative 'surface' learner to operate at a manageable level of challenge, while the theoretical and methodological themes can be pursued by the more adventurous or 'deep' learner. Both levels are permitted, and both expressed in the actual materials and teaching. Clusters could include: Commodification (as a unifying deep theme), which might deal with the debates about how corporations add leisure values or re-enchant their enterprises, taking examples from McDonalds, Disney, Barbie or Nike, and then present the case for the active consumer and the capacity for reinterpretation and resistance. The basis of consumer resistance (strangely absent in the work on Disney) might be explored as another deep theme connecting the specifics. Demographic effects, reviewing the work on class, race and gender(s), with deep options to link them, including the relative claims of the permanence of each major form of division, measurement difficulties in isolating variables, the effects of (post)modernity on conventional social identities, or a comparison of forms of resistance by activists.
46
Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture Methodological debates, illustrated by choosing topics which feature traditional adherences to different approaches (effects analysis in TV, say, with qualitative work on different readings of mass media material). Theoretical debates, the classic location of deep principles joining specific topics, tracking the development of feminist perspectives, say from Green et al. to Aitchison, or gramscian work from classic to recent phases. Concepts like hegemony can be traced from early applications to youth and class to notions of hegemonic masculinity. Theoretical positions can be compared according to their treatment of common topics football fandom would be a classic case study, or possibly readings of popular movies (especially Bond movies). Assessment varies with the nature of the audience as well. The most commonly used assessment item for me is the essay or project, which classically invites students to compare and contrast theoretical work and popular knowledge about a topic. A typical essay would ask first for a review of the academic work on clubbing (say), based around a technical issue such as the research techniques used or the role of subcultural capital, and then ask for a critical commentary based on personal or commercial knowledge. Prompts here might include questions about the currency of the academic material, or the claimed advantages of relatively detached academic approaches rather than personal involvement. Projects might place the stress the other way around, inviting a personal account of experience supplemented by a critical academic commentary. I have experimented with multiple choice tests designed primarily to force a close encounter with actual texts and to break over-dependence on textbooks or lecture notes. Students are told that one of three selected pieces (articles or chapters in books) will be the subject of a multiple choice test assuming detailed knowledge. The texts are made available in advance. One is selected at random and a test constructed based upon it. Right answers are displayed immediately after the test, and marking is rapid and not burdensome. Results can take the form of unusual distributions, however. Software to run online multiple choice testing is worth exploring. Student surveys so far (on another course) have indicated that students were encouraged to read some actual research material for the first time in some cases, and work is continuing to establish the overall effects of using such tests. About the Author Dr Dave Harris has been teaching in higher education for a long time and has taught in a number of social science fields, including Education, Sociology and Media Studies as well as in Leisure and Tourism. Publications include: 2004 (December) Key Concepts in Leisure Studies. London: Sage Publications. 2003 Teaching Yourself Social Theory. London, Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. 1996 A Society of Signs? London and New York: Routledge. 1992 From Class Struggle to the Politics of Pleasure: the effects of gramscianism in cultural studies. London and New York: Routledge. 1987 Open-ness and Closure in Distance Education. London: Falmer Press.
47

Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture

Caricato da

Informazioni sul documento

Descrizione originale:

Copyright

Formati disponibili

Condividi questo documento

Condividi o incorpora il documento

Opzioni di condivisione

Hai trovato utile questo documento?

Questo contenuto è inappropriato?

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture

Caricato da

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

Higher Education Academy Network for Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism

Resource Guide in:

Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture

Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture

Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture

Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture

Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture

Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture

Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture

Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture

Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture

Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture

Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture

Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture

Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture

Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture

Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture

Resource Guide: Leisure Consumerism and Popular Culture

Potrebbero piacerti anche