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This book illustrates how leisure, as with other complex ideas that hold currency in today's world, suffers at the level of common sense, due to a combination of oversimplification, moral depreciation, and even lack of recognition. Leisure's modern legacy is both profound and immense, as a product of approximately 45 years of steady research, application and theory development. The common sense view of free-time activities, therefore, can and should be challenged. Stebbins provides this confrontation by tackling four particular themes: that gatekeepers within the institutions of higher education and funding agencies for research often fail to attach adequate resources to the idea of leisure; that the general population are guided by certain common sense definitions and largely unaware of how an informed view of free time could be beneficial; that practitioners within certain fields continue to refuse to engage with the idea of leisure despite its benefit for their clients; and that the weak reception of the science of leisure within mainstream social sciences suggests a similarly warped understanding of how people use their free time. Leisure's Legacy will be of interest to scholars of Leisure Studies and all those wishing to learn more about the vital importance of leisure in modern Western society.

"In the scientific studies of play and leisure there has been an unfortunate tendency for the enthusiasts of one to ignore the contributions made by their colleagues in the other. This book shows what the two fields have been missing because of this isolation. The new idea of augmentative play enables us to examine how and where play and leisure are often vitally dependent on each other. Augmentative play is a special activity that aids substantially the pursuit of a larger, encompassing leisure activity. This approach to the study of play is unique. It recognizes the hundreds of activities in which play and leisure come together, sometimes to produce deeply fulfilling experiences and outcomes for participants, other times to produce more fleeting enjoyment for them"--

For fifteen years, Robert Stebbins has conducted extensive research on amateurs and professionals in theatre, music, archaeology, astronomy, baseball, football, magic, and stand-up comedy. His publications are the only ones to give the theme of serious leisure such in-depth scholarly attention. In Amateurs, Professionals, and Serious Leisure, Stebbins brings together the findings of this research project to provide a theoretical framework that reveals the commonalities across these eight fields.

"This work of cultural anthropology centered on the Arab Muslim world is remarkable for its originality and by the scope of its information." -Hichem Djaït, author of Islamic Culture in Crisis Community involvement and leisure are rarely mentioned in mass media coverage of the Middle East and North Africa, yet leisure and community involvement form a part of life in the region, and are becoming increasingly significant as modernization becomes pervasive. This work seeks to examine how the interconnection of work and leisure operates in a culture far removed from North American or European traditions.

People are becoming progressively happier and enjoying an ever-improving quality of life, they say, mostly because they are putting their skills and reason to work. The Idea of Leisure is based on the assumption that leisure also fits into the social order, and it provides a singular vector by which to measure progress. Robert A. Stebbins believes that leisure fosters positive development in both the individual and community. He makes a solid case for linking leisure with progress.

Barbership singing is often dismissed by its critics as merely an enjoyable hobby. Though long popular with both its public and participants, it has been relatively neglected in the field of music studies. Robert A. Stebbins demonstrates that barbershop singing is an elaborate and complicated form of serious leisure that provides its participants with distinctive lifestyles. The Barbershop Singer is a unique case study of this significant musical genre, describing the social world of the barbershop singer and exploring its appeal for both male and female singers. Robert Stebbins traces the history of barbershop singing and compares and contrasts the worlds of jazz, classical music, and barbershop as serious leisure pursuits. Stebbins also reveals its costs and rewards, its complex organizational structures, the social marginality felt by its more dedicated participants, and the main problems facing the art today. Although barbershop singing is clearly a circumscribed social world, understanding how it works expands current knowledge of the variant forms of social participation available to citizens of the modern world. The Barbershop Singer will be of interest to sociologists as well as those involved in the world of barbershop