Leisure Studies in a Global Era Series

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.

The Interrelationship of Leisure and Play

by Robert A. Stebbins

Published 14 January 2014

Augmentative play is a special activity that substantially aids 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.

Pondering Everyday Life

by Robert A. Stebbins

Published 30 January 2020

This pivot provides a conceptual statement of an approach to understanding the interrelationships of work, leisure, and "chore" activities in daily life, and how they are managed in practice.

Drawing on the sociology of everyday life, Stebbins puts forward the notion of Pondering Everyday Life (PEA), a thinking process/activity in which we routinely understand, coordinate, organize, remember, and compare our involvements in work, leisure, and non-work obligations. This perspective demonstrates how the interrelation between these three domains helps bring meaning and continuity to everyday life. As a micro- and meso-level conception that takes into account social, cultural and historic context, Stebbins contemplates how and what PEA can tell us about an individual's view of their own life.

Pondering Everyday Life will be of interest to students and scholars across leisure studies, social psychology, and the sociology of leisure and work.