Decentring Leisure: Rethinking Leisure Theory

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SAGE, Mar 8, 1995 - Education - 224 pages
This book explores the meaning of leisure in the context of key social formations of our time. Chris Rojek brings together the insights of feminsim, Marxism, Weber, Elias, Simmel, Nietzsche and Baudrillard to produce a survey - and rethinking - of leisure theory. At the same time he presents a radical critique of the traditional ′centring′ of leisure, on ′escape′, ′freedom′ and ′choice′.

Revealing how leisure practices have responded to living in a risk society, he shows that ′free′ time becomes something very different when simulation and nostalgia lie at the heart of everyday life.

 

Contents

CapitalismModernityPostmodernity
1
Capitalism and Leisure
12
Reproduction
28
Modernity and Leisure
36
4 Mechanism of Regulation
59
the Disorder of Things
79
6 The Phenomenology of Leisure
104
Postmodernism and Leisure
129
8 Postmodern Leisure
146
Conclusion Homo FaberHomo Ludens
175
Notes
193
References
201
Author Index
212
Subject Index
214
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About the author (1995)

Chris Rojek is Professor of Sociology and Culture at Brunel University, West London. He is a prolific and influential author in the field of Celebrity, Leisure Studies and Popular Culture. In 2003 he was awarded the Allen V. Sapora prize for outstanding achievement in the field of Leisure and Tourism Studies. Besides lecturing in the UK he has given lectures on leisure in Australia, Canada, the USA and the Netherlands. In 2009 he was Hood Fellow at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He also writes on celebrity culture, neat capitalism and myths and realities of national identity. His current research is on popular music and popular culture and the meaning of the celetoid in Reality TV.

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