Freedom to be

Leisure is complex and changing. In this book the author takes the risk of operating across several modes of sociology. Sociology includes existential as well as structural approaches and interpretive as well as “social fact” modes of analysis. His concern is more to widen the theoretical basis of understanding leisure than to broaden definitions of sociology. The persistent aim of this book is to produce theory. Following an introductory chapter on the nature of theory and the outline of the book, there are eight chapters on the explanatory approaches, or models, employed in the dialectical analysis. These models focus on particular elements of leisure: experience, decision, development, identities, interaction, institutions, political forces, and human definitions.