Suchergebnisse

Today, widespread use of digital technologies transform cultural forms, among them leisure and art. This article analyzes nine creative, political enactments on the ground, communicated on the Internet. Five are rooted in the vitality and freedom of leisure, and four spring from the dedicated work of professional artists. The techniques applied in all of these actions are knitting/crocheting, allowing crowd production and crowd financing. Amateurs seem to experience less strain and more sociability in this type of activism than professionals do. Their efforts may be modest and imbued with individual gratification, but those who take part are nevertheless able to move among "peers," announce a project, share in the construction of a political space, and likely to bring this positive experience to future civic/political involvements. The article's proposition is that the digital turn has opened a participatory political potential growing directly out of pleasurable, everyday leisure.

Rock climbing, collecting, role-playing, backpacking, and many other complex activities are part of the expanding cultural repertoire of modern societies. Participants in such game-like pursuits occasionally find themselves contributing to public concerns beyond their own interests; altruistic motives and/or oppositional identities develop among them by virtue of the actors being enmeshed in a specialized activity apart from political organizations or social movements. The aim of the article is to contribute to an understanding of why and how such communities stretch their commitments into the real world. The contention is that complex leisure constitutes a democratically important but somewhat concealed political channel that fits modern citizens' way of life. The analysis is essentially theoretical but relies on empirical materials for illustration.

More than ever, social scientists have reason to question the assumption that work is the human activity of value and leisure is little more than a respite from work; a way to consume its fruits and prepare for more work. This article compares four conceptualizations of the demanding activities people choose for themselves in their spare time. Each one is based on relatively recent empirical studies and presented to social science with a distinct term: `serious leisure', `specialized play', `edgework', and `consumption within a fantasy enclave'. Any conceptual representation allows certain interpretations of social phenomena and blocks others. In this case, vastly different pictures emerge, depending on the conception chosen. Thus, the major finding of the article is that sociology urgently needs to assess its vocabulary in order to understand how the modern predicament affects men and women in their freest moments.

Contemporary society offers a large repertoire of `adventures', culturally adapted to the maturity, gender and class of those who participate. The captivating, yet challenging demands of, say, collecting objects, backpacking, or mountaineering, guide actors to turn their adventures into personal frames or proto-boundaries through which ideas of `self ` evolve. Of the many possible selves a person may relate to, only a few are actually enacted upon and even fewer are embraced. An identity moulded in play is distinctive in the sense that it is also a chosen identity, easily incorporated into self-supporting narratives. By studying how men and women carve metaphors out of their leisure, sociology may acquire a better understanding of how contradictions within the `subject-self ` are actually recognized and chronicled. This type of adult play sheds light not only on processes of identity and individuation but also on issues of individual and social integration, and organization.