This book contains original work from key scholars across the globe, including those working outside the Leisure Studies mainstream. It showcases the state of the art of contemporary Leisure Studies, covering key topics and key thinkers from the psychology of leisure to leisure policy, from Bourdieu to Baudrillard, and suggests that leisure in the 21st century should be understood as centring on a new ‘Big Seven’ (holidays, drink, drugs, sex, gambling, TV and shopping). No other book has gone as far in redefining the identity of the discipline of Leisure Studies, or in suggesting how the substantive ideas of Leisure Studies need to be rethought. The Routledge Handbook of Leisure Studies should therefore be the intellectual guide of first choice for all scholars, academics, researchers and students working in this subject area.
Tony Blackshaw is Reader at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. He has published works on a broad range of themes in Leisure Studies which include the following: Leisure Life: Myth, Masculinity and Modernity (Routledge, 2003), The Sage Dictionary of Leisure Studies (with Garry Crawford) (Sage, 2009) and Leisure (Routledge, 2010).