Introduction to special issue: Rethinking leisure and community research: Critical reflections and future agendas

Troy D. Glover, William Stewart

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

In our introductory essay to this special issue of Leisure/Loisir, we establish the need to rethink leisure and community research. In so doing, we encourage a deliberate shift away from the study of community recreation to the study of community recreation. Community recreation, we argue, dominates leisure research insofar as it has tended to focus on the actual management of recreation services delivered within specific geographic boundaries. The basis for research under this approach is neither about community nor its connections to recreation, but reflects a corporate turn centred on users and aspects of their recreation. Along these lines, researchers have seemingly abandoned the notion of community altogether to focus, either directly or indirectly, on matters related to finance. The implied value orientation of this dominant discourse is to advocate for management, assuming that if a policy is good for recreation management, then it must be good for the community. As such, the moniker “recreation management” has all but replaced community recreation in the leisure literature. In contrast, community recreation acknowledges a collective “we” as being a central aspect of study and an important value for our research to promote. Although it recognizes individuals and uses information from individuals for analysis, this distinct focus assumes research ought to start and end with concerns about community. We argue a shift toward community recreation has profound effects on the research process.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)315-327
Number of pages13
JournalLeisure/ Loisir
Volume30
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 2006

Keywords

  • Community
  • Re-centring research
  • Recreation
  • Social policy

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Geography, Planning and Development
  • Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality Management

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