• Only available to the wealthy
• Wealth spend lives in a show of conspicuous consumption
• The poor were to busy working to have time to have leisure
• Status group dynamics- people want to imitate the wealthy, move up in social status

• Reaction against leisure as class priviledge
• Focuses on doing things for the pleasure of doing them
• Example: Camping with a simple tent
• All that matters is gratification
• Against expensive equipment

Leisure as Sociological Concept

• Leisure as social phenomenom
• To understand leisure you have to first understand society
• Socialization

• Learning proper attitudes, beliefs, values of a culture
• It is possible to be socialized into a smaller group within a larger society
• It occurs from modeling, social rewards (smile), social sanctions/punishments  (glare)

1. Family
2. Peers
3. School
4. Mass media
5. Government

• Leisure is something individuals do as an expression of the personality
• Focus's on the experience of the individual
• Activities are ones own choice and engaged in with a high sense of freedom
• Leisure is opportunity for growth or for destructive behavior
• Leisure is purposeful, individual and should have beneficial consequences

• Leisure is not linked to work, free time
• Life has to be perceived as a whole and you cannot segregate work and leisure
• Leisure is what one perceives it to be
• Obligation is not always opposite of leisure

Classical Concept of Leisure

• Aristotle- you need to use your mind in leisure
• Leisure is all about things that are an end in themselves and not a means to an end
• For example: Working to make money is a means to an end
• Intrinsic: done for its own sake and not for the sake of anything else
• State of being (not activities)
• Freedom from necessity

• Leisure is time left over from lifes obligations
• Obligations like work, family maintenance, personal maintenance, chores
• Advantage: It is possible to measure the amount of leisure time someone has in their life
• Disadvantage: Leaves the experience out, there could be unobilgated time where you are totally bored an obligated time where you are having a good time and you would do it even if you didnt have to

• schole- leisure
• a- lack or want of
• aschole- unleisure- state of being occupied, being engaged in a activity for a purpose, goal oriented activity
• Leisure has something to do with not being involved in a goal-oriented activity

• that which in itself is more final than than pursued for the sake of something else.

(Classical) Leisure as an end in itself

• leisure is a state of being, free from necessity, through which activity is pursued FOR ITS OWN SAKE and never for the sake of anything else.
• leisure is an intrinsic activity

• classical concept of happiness
• fulfilling ones potential, full life, human flourishing
• attained when ones potential for a full rational life is realized to the utmost

• Vegetative soul
• Sensitive soul
• Rational soul
  • practical
  • speculative

We have all three types but only humans have a rational soul

• Involves growth

• Involves feeling and movement
• What seperates animals from plants

• Involves thinking
• What seperates humans from animals
• Two sub-sections of rational soul
  • Practical- intellect applied to reach a goal
  • Speculative- intellect applied for its own sake
• Speculative intellect is considered higher and better then practical intellect

• You should work to fulfill your potential
• Humans essences is rational intellect, minds
• acorns essence is oak-ness, a rocks essence is rock-ness

Proper activites of schole/leisure in classical

• music
• contemplation (thinking about the nature of things, studying for fun)

Why are these the proper activites?

• There done for their own sake
• they help develope the rational soul (aka the mind)

• Totum bonum- all the partial goods
• Goods of the soul- leisure
• Leisure- the highest good of all the partial goods (summom bonum), Why?
  • its an end in itself
  • helps you fulfill your potential as a rational human being
  • of all the things that humans need, the need for learning is the most human

(Classical) leisure vs. play and recreation

• leisure is pursued for its own sake
• we cannot work constantly
• we need recreation and amusment to restore ourselves for occupation
• amusement and recreation are NOT ends in themselves
• Amusement and recreation are NOT leisure

• leisure was the most important thing for a life well lived
• classical leisure- a state of being
• classical happiness- activity
• Modern
  • leisure- activity
  • happiness- a state of being

• Happiness involves schole as the most important "partial good" in living a good life
• Pleasure is only a part of happiness
• Leisure can be pleasurable but does not have to be
• Leisure is objective
• there are proper ways to engage in leisure (music and contemplation)
• Leisure, in part, has a public or societal basis

Adler- Modern interpretation of classical leisure

•  5 ways to spend time:
  • Sleeping (includes eating and all body stuff)
  • Playing ( all stuff just for fun or pleasure
  • Idleness (killing time)
  • subsistence-work (for money)
  • lesiure-work (you learn and grow as a person)

• Limited goods
  • you can have too much of these
  • they harm you, or take you away from other goods
• Unlimited Goods
  • You can never have too much of these
•  Sleeping, playing, idleness, subsistence-work are limited goods
• Leisure-work is a unlimited good

• "Bread and circuses"
• Leisure- passive, barbaric, large scale entertainment
• Spectator leisure- no participation, just watched
• Epicureans and Stoics- Philosophers

• Leisure as social control

• Everything is subjective, Leisure is subjective
• Gods have no influence on our lives
• We have no immaterial souls
• Borrowed Democritus' idea of atomism:
  • Universe is made up of only atoms and the void they move in
  • Everything is a product of atoms in space
• Absolute truth DOES NOT EXIST
• Knowledge is nothing more than different arrangements of atoms in space
• Best way of life: Maximize pleasure, minimize pain

• Afraid of the gods and of death
• Gods unpredictable
• Gods had human qualities
• Fearful of what would happen in the afterlife

Epicurus and Pleasure

• Best pleasures are the ones that dont cause you pain later (intellectual pleasure, physical pleasure in moderation)
• Pleasure is conceived of as tranquility
• He wasnt a hedonist or sensualist: that was slander by the rising Christian church, aimed at discrediting him
• Happiness is found through withdrawl, simplicity, and elimination of anxiety

• Put a high value on friendship, and simple things like how good bread tastes when you're hungry, or water when you're thirsty
• "We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink..."

• Lived during period of war and upset
• You should not have to rely on luck to have a "Good life"
• Happiness should depend only on your state of mind
• "Passion"- anguish or suffering; passively reacting to external events
• Use your mind and reason to free yourself from passion
• Then you will be free, calm and happy, even in prison or under torture
• Unmoved by good or bad fortune

• Derived from Anglo-Saxon plega= game or sport
• Spontaneous
• Self-initiated and self regulated
• Risk Free (not always)
• Not necessarily goal oriented
• Intrinsically motivated
• Often includes a dimension of "pretend"
• Pervasive: much human activity includes elements of play
• Universal: There's no society in which young don't play. (Adults too... we just call it recreation)

• Vary across cultures, generations and age, type of work enviorment, religion, socio-economic background

• Contest- with yourself or others
• Rule bound
  • simple or complex
  • no fun without these
• Special place and/or equipment
• Time span- sometimes beating the clock
• Artificial- set aside from reality

Types of Play in Games

• 4 major forms of play:
  • Agon (competition)- sport and games
  • Alea (Chance)- Dice, some card, I Ching
  • Ilinx (Vertigo)- sensory stimulation: hang gliding, drug use
  • Mimicry (stimulation)- role playing, theater

Classical theories of Play

• Predate the late nineteenth and early twentieth century
• Focus of the Physical and instictive aspects of play
  • Surplus energy theory
  • relaxation (recreation) theory
  • recapitulation theory
  • preparation (instinct/practice) theory
  • preparation (learning/development) theory

• Key idea: Play is motivated by the need to release excess energy (Spencer, 1873)
• It does not explain...
  • why people with little energy still play
  • playing beyond exhaustion
  • nonphysical play (like chess)
  • why play takes different forms

• Key idea: Play is used to relax and restore energy (Lazarus, 1900)
• Play and work are seperate
• Play serves to restore enery that we expend in work
• It doesn't explain...
  • Recreation of people who do not lead stressful lives
  • Children's play (they don't relax)
  • Play that is similar to work

• Key idea: We relive our evolutionary past through play (hall, 1906)
  • Animal stage (climbing and swinging)
  • Savage
  • Nomad
  • Agricultural
  • Tribal
• Play is not an activity that develops future instinctual skills, but rather serves to rid you of primitive and unneccessary instinctual skills carried over by heredity

• Key Idea: Play is practice for adult life
  • prepares children to be adults
  • prepares kittens to be cats
• In both cases, the young rehearse behaviors that will be useful. For humans:
  • Team work
  • Role playing
  • Understanding and following rules
• Assumes play is unique to childhood
• Hunting, hide and seek, playing house may be explained by this theory
• Doesn't explain adult play

• Key idea: Play aids in development and mastery of 3 important stages
• Certain types of play are critical to certain stages of development
• 3 Stages
  1. We learn to physically engage in activity..
  2. Then we learn to manipulate objects
  3. Finally, our play helps us master social relationships

• Play aids in socialization
• Socialization: the process of learning how to get along in society (values, beliefs, norms, proper behavior)
• You learn what's fair, what's right and wrong
• Social animals learn this too! We "socialize" (or train) our pets into how to behave

Discrepancy Theory of Motivation

• There is a difference or discrepancy between your present state and your desired state
• Example: You present state= hungry, you desired state= full and satistfied
• The discrepancy creates a tension and motivates action

• We tend to ceate expectations about future events 
• Motivation is a combination of:
  • Valence: The value of the perceived outcome (what's in it for me?)
  • Intrumentality: The belief that certain actions will achieve the valued outcome (clear path?)
  • Expectancy: The belief that I am able to complete the actions (my capability?)
• Of course you can have an unpleasant outcome, in which case the motivation is now one of aviodance

• Discrepancy: I'm in the office, tired and bored.  I'd like to get outside, test my skills and have fun
• Expectancy: I expect that skiing will get me outside, test my skills, and be fun.  I value that! So, I'll go skiing.

• People demand recreation on four levels simultaneously
  1. Activities
  2. Settings (enviormental, social, managerial)
  3. Experiences
  4. Benefits (Personal, social, economic, enviornmental)
• Activities and settings can be managed directly
• Experience and benefits can't be managed and you have to hope that people get these if you've managed the settings and activities well

• ROS is a conceptual framework for encouraging diversity in outdoor recreation opportunites
• The ROS deals with the settings level of the recreation demand hierarchy.
• Describes a variety of settings, from primitive to urbanized, that should support a variety of opportunites for recreation experiences

Opportunity Classes for The ROS

• Primitive (Isolation, Outdoor skills, Challenge and risk, unmodified natural environment)
• Semi-Primitive non motorized
• Semi-Primitive motorized
• Rustic
• Concentrated
• Modern urbanized (Convienence, urbanized environment, facilities designed for use and convienence)

Each of these opportunities are characterized by different physical, social, and managerial settings

Flow

• "Optimal Experience"
• "Peak Experience"
• Being "In the zone"

1. Challenging activity that requires skills
2. Merging of action and awareness
3. Concentration on task at hand (focus)
4. Loss of self-conciousness (very involved in the activity that they are doing, not concerned about anything else)
5. Clear goals and feedback
6. Sense of control
7. Transformation of time (time flew by, time dragged out)
8. Autotelic experience (self goaled, intrinsic)

• Challenges are above your skills= worry
• Callenges are way above your skills= anxiety
• Your skills are above the challenge= boredom
• Your skills are way above the challenge= anxiety (antsiness)
• Challenges and Skills match= Likely to enter flow channel (greater chance you will be "in the zone"

• Low skills, low challenges= apathy
• Low challenges, High skills= boredom
• Low Skills, High challenges= anxiety
• High Skills, High challenges= Flow (best opportunity

Flow and Identity

• You are more likely to experience flow when the activity supports your identity

• Talks about the percieved competence and percieved risk
• High risk, low competence= devastation and disaster
• High competence, Low risk= exploration and experimentation
• Percieved competence and percieved risk are equal= peak experience

• People differ in their ability to fill free time satisfactorily
• People who use make believe, memories and daydreaming ("high fantasizers") may be more successful at using themselves as entertainment

• Leisure is a ritual that sets people outside their normal lives
• Liminality: the transition from the everyday to outside the everyday
• Communitas: a temporary sense of social togetherness formed in leisure (outside of everyday life) Example: Raiders Fans

• Fairness

• Equality: reward should be equal regardless of effort/input (get into a national park for the same price is everyone else regardless of how much you pay in taxes)
• Equity: Reward should be proportional to effort/input (which is why group projects are so annoying)

Inequity in Leisure, Constraints

• Intrapersonal constraints: no desire, skills, socialization.  People are pre-disposed to define certain activities as inappropriate (men in aerobics classes, women in paintball)
• Interpersonal Constraints: No social support, no one to do it with
• Structual Constraints: No money, time equipment (the most common constraints)

• Inclusion= efforts made to include people with special life conditions (Example- Adapted sports, murderball)
• Diversity= recognition and celebration of differences within a unifying sense of togetherness
• There is unfairness in leisure. Barriers exist to equal opportunities, especially for groups like women, people with disabilities, gays and lesbians, immigrants, and at-risk youth
• Leisure has the potential to increase fairness in society
• America is now thought of as pluralism (not a melting pot but a salad bowl) Celebrating, acknowledge differences within a whole

Marginality Thesis

• Ethnic and racial differences are due to lack of opportunity
• Certain groups systematically excluded

Ethnicity Thesis

• Differences are due to culturally based value systems
• Example: certain groups just don't go hiking

Culture Shock Among Immigrants

• Culture shock: losing all familiar signs and symbols of one's home society. Familiar cues removed. Fish out of water
  • Honeymoon phase- excitement, interest.
  • Crisis phase- everything seems difficult. Homesickness
  • Adjustment and reorientation- communication and traditions are clearer
  • Adaptation and resolution- more "at home," sense of humor comes back. Bicultural identity

Self-fulfilling prophecy

If you assume someone can't do something, then they can't

• People assume if someone is physically disabled, he or she must have mental problems as well

Over-exaggeration assumption

• People with disabilities think only about the disability

• Pleasure in viewing, particularly of attractive people

Characteristics of Pop Culture

• Popular
  • High Culture- pastimes of the elite (ballet, literature, fine, art... sometimes very popular! But, often not)
  • Folk culture- more local pastimes (stories, jokes, games)
• Commercial
• Trendy- does not last long
• Specific to age groups
  • Vendors of common culture tend to focus on youth

• Defined by its typicality
• Most visible and pervasive level of culture in a society
• Cell phones, McDonald's, email, televsion, the mall, pop music, movies...

Technological revolution

• the "taking over" of all aspects of te technological innovation
• Cyberculture: way of life created by heavy use of computers

• Computer-created music and art and games
• online chat groups
• surfing the net
• simulated activities: virtual reality
• Innovating places to play: biking in the living room, climbing fake rock, space travel
• Better equipment: stronger and lighter equipment, warmer and cooler clothing
• GPS
• New opportunities for people with disabilities

Technology Problems for Leisure

• No true vacations
• Most people don't get away for vacations and when they do they must stay connected with e-mail
• Enviornmental Damage: Snowmobiles, SUVs, GPS leads people into remote areas, old gear is thrown away
• Technology Promotes violence
• Passivity, social isolation
• Increased consumerism

• the process by which culture is transmitted

• New practice, principle, or tool that gains broad acceptance
• Example: TV

• Spread or borrowing of customs or practices

Culture Change, Acculturation

• Major culture changes resulting form 2 societies coming in contact
• 3 possibilities
  • Merger (melting pot of 2 cultures)
  • One becomes a subculture
  • One culture becomes extinct

Culture Change, Culture Loss

• Some things just die out or are shoved aside by other things

• Original Leisure society
• Nomadic hunters and gatherers
• Did not have to work hard to survive
• 3-4 hours of work per day, mixed with socializing and rest
• Free from material pressure- one skin bag to hold everything

Leisure and Modernity

• 4 sub-processes in modernization
  • techonological development
  • industrialization
  • Agricultural development
  • Urbanization
• Most important modern culture value: efficiency
• Modern Leisure: commerical, diverse, sped up

Postmodernism

• A breakdown of old certainties and standards (progress, prosperity, equality, peace) that seemed so solid and achievable in modernism
• Growth of service sector, fracturing of tradition, domination of life by electronic media, fragmentation of identities
• Full of: Contested meanings, parody, pastiche, Nostalgia, cultural cross-over 

• Focused on self-fulfillment
• Consumption information, and media based
• Individualized (vs. group)
• Technologically oriented
• Focused on image and fashion

• Also known as, purple recreation, taboo recreation
• Definition: pastimes that violate social norms yet bring pleasure to the participants
• Social norms vary over time, across cultures, by social group

• Prescriptive norms:
  • What everyone should do
  • "Behaving properly"
• Descriptive norms:
  • what many people actually do
  • smoking, speeding, cheating

Motivations for "Deviant Leisure"

• Pleasure, thrill seeking, social pressure, boredom
• Sometimes aim (and excitement) is not getting caught

Nash Pyramid: Hierarchy of Leisure values

• 4 creative participation (writing a poem)
• 3 active participation (playing tennis)
• 2 emotional participation (watching a play)
• 1 entertainment/killing time (watching tv)
• -1 injury to self (drug use)
• -2 acts against society (vandalism)

• Substance abuse
  • Drugs and alcohol are recreational
  • But they provide only short trips, and overuse can lead to personal and social problems
• Gambling
  • Fun! Take chances, generate excitement
• Complusive behavior
  • Running, gambling
  • When it starts interfering with you life it crosses the line from serious leisure to compulsive behavior
• Ideational mentality: the belief or idea that something is bad

• Types of Vandalism
  • Not intentional or mean
    • Overuse vandalism= too many people using a facility
    • Spin off vandalism= other activities lead to destruction (baseball through window)
  • Design Problems
    • Conflict vandalism= natural behavior conflicts with design (social trails)
    • "No-other-way-to-do-it" vandalism= no alternative (sitting on a planter)
    • Inventive vandalism= solution to needs (picnic table as diving board)
  • Sort of Bad
    • Curiosity vandalism= irresistible temptation or lack of discipline (pull up tree, see if hook can hold you)
    • Slovenly Vandalism= bad manners & carelessness (littering)
  • Really Bad
    • Self-expression vandalism= attempt to be noticed (graffiti)
    • Malicious Vandalism= wanting to get back at agency
    • Thrill Vandalism= dare from friends or desire for excitement

Taboo Recreation that Hurts society (Level -2 on nash pyramid) Taboo Sex

• 3 important uses for sex:
  • Procreational, Relational, Recreational
  • Satisfying sexual encounters can be a pleasing opportunity to enjoy and communicate with another person
• Some forms of recreational sex are considered inappropriate, immoral, or illegal by some societies
  • Pornography
  • Prostitution
  • Even though these are common, they are still not "normal" or universally approved of

Pornography

• Erotic art and literature are found in most societies, but whether they are considered obscene varies
• Historically a product of male imagination, tho more is available that appeals to women's erotic interests
• Some victimizes women and children by making them targets of degradation and violence

• A major tourist attraction, big business, in places controlled by government
• Any harm?
  • Immoral by tradition and belief
  • Possible spread of disease

• "Normlessness"- lack of cultural guides to behavior
• Also "anomic leisure"- too much time, too little structure
• Lack of purpose and identity; boredom
• Example: violence among sport spectators (customary norms no longer govern behavior)

Explanation for Deviant Leisure: 2. Differential Association

• "Hanging out with the wrong crowd"
• Delinquent behavior is learned through interaction with others (socialization)
• Example: gangs

Explanation for Deviant Leisure: 3. Retreatism

• When a society has:
  • Culturally prescribed goals (money, power)
  • Culturally prescribed means of attaining these goals (work hard), and
  • Members who cannot achieve the goals using the prescribed means, then
• Deviance occurs
• Typology of Deviance
  • Innovation: accepts goals but rejects means (steals, cheats)
  • Ritualism: rejects goals, accepts means (going through the motions)
  • Retreatism: rejects goals and means; withdrawal, opting out of socially defined desirable behavior (addicts, alcoholics)
  • Rebellion: Rejects goals and means, replaces with new values (political revolutionaries)

• Leisure class (people who have traditional work and define leisure in relation to work) vs. alternative leisure class
• Artists, travelers, bohemians, tramps, thieves, drug addicts, pyschotics, alcoholics, "trustafarians," vagrants
  • Reject norms of society (work, monogamy, efficiency)
  • Often skeptical or hostile to the values of "straight" society
  • Rootless, often nomadic existence

• Inherent belief: Leisure is good
• But, some leisure expressions hard participants or others
• Many of the most popular activites are illegal
• Aristotle: Leisure requires making moral free-time choices
• Premise of leisure professionals: help people make positive life choices that enhance wellness

Leisure and Economics

• Economics- how people use their scarce resources to satisfy unlimited wants
• Leisure is an economic tool
  • Desire and ability to buy leisure goods and services are expanding in wealthy societies
  • Personal income is rising- we have more money to spend on pasttimes
  • Leisure is a fast-growing segment of the economy

• Gross Domestic Product (How much money goes around the economy) is the classic measure for standard of living. The more money spent, the better
• Drawback of GDP: it doesn't care what kind of spending happens. Over values production and consumption of goods.
  • Oil spills, divorce, frivolous lawsuits, bull in china shop: all cause spending to go up
  • But do we really want to grow on the basis of damage and chaos?

Standard of Living- GPI

• Genuine Progress Indicator
• It is an attempt to measure whether a country's growth has actually resulted in the improvment of the welfare of the people. Takes into account enviornmental sustainability
• GPI counts...
  • Cost of resource depletion
  • Cost of crime
  • Cost of ozone depletion
  • Cost of family breakdown
  • Cost of air, water and noise pollution
  • Loss of farmland
  • Loss of Wetlands

• Another better measure for standard of living is Human Development Index. Includes things that GDP ignores:
  • Life expectancy
  • Adult literacy
  • School enrollment
  • Per capita GDP

Leisure and Economic Development

• In idustrialized economies, basic needs are met and production can turn to services such as the tourism industry
• In developing economies such as Niger and Sierra Leone, only people who are rich enough not to have to produce food have leisure.  This amounts to a "leisure class."

• Society must pay for leisure-related problems, e.g. dog poop, accidents, trade deficits
• Tourism sometimes causes oppression, exploitation, high costs for native people

• Very poor people are happier to have more $. But past a certain point, additional $ doesn't make much difference.  Expectations are easily inflated; it takes more and more to "juice the joy"
• If you have a lot of investments you spend a lot of time worrying about them.
• Buy nothing day, Friday, November 23