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This paper presents findings from time-use surveys in the UK, which were conducted prior to, during and following the Covid-19 lockdowns in 2020 and 2021. These findings are set against the background of evidence from similar surveys in the UK and globally from 1920s onwards. Movements into and out of successive lockdowns between 2020 and 2021 disrupted former temporary routines with consequences that endured in 2022. There has been no return to the old normal, or even towards that normal. The new normal was a population with more leisure time than pre-pandemics but which was also spending more time doing paid work. There were differences in sex, age and income, but overall time had been released for other uses by people doing less travelling, less studying and less unpaid child care. Extra leisure time was being filled mainly by the media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last 30 years, leisure scholars have tended to split into specialists on sport, tourism, and other "little leisures". Meanwhile, the voices of scholars who continue to write about "big leisure" rarely travel beyond their own networks. This paper explains how leisure research and theory commanded wider audiences during the early and mid-twentieth century. This was in binary international political contexts in which democracies and fascist countries, then after 1945 capitalism and communism, each claimed to be offering a superior way of life. Since the "revolutions from below" in 1989, a binary has been absent. The capitalist market economy has spread globally, with no serious competitor. However, traditional national and religious cultures have not weakened. Also, the present-day world contains a mix of liberal democracies, managed democracies, and autocratic dynasties. We have entered an era of multiple modernities. Up to now, none have needed the theories and evidence of leisure scholars to legitimize the regimes. However, this paper identifies an emergent binary, created by economic competition between super-powers in South and East Asia and the West, which offer contrasting conceptions of a good life. It is argued that engagement with these differences is a route to renewed political relevance for global leisure studies in the 2020s and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains how the spread of Covid-19 in early-2020 led to containment measures throughout Europe, including a legally enforced lockdown in the UK from 23 March which closed most out-of-home leisure provisions. Time use evidence is then used to show how lockdown led to an abrupt, unprecedented in scale, increase in residual 'leisure' time, and how this was distributed and used among males and females, in different age groups. The immediate lessons for leisure studies have been to endorse claims that leisure activities promote well-being, that loss of social connections at work and leisure weakens macro-solidarity, and that the importance of leisure provisions in modern economies. Experiences during the lockdown, and difficulties in existing, then clarify exactly which leisure matters most, for whom, and why. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper urges resetting research into youth and leisure to match recent extensions of the life stage. It also proposes that the special mission of sociology within studies of youth and leisure should be to focus on "Big Leisure", all of it, rather than a series of "little leisures". These proposals are applied in analysing the findings from surveys of nationally representative samples totalling approximately 2000, 15–29-year-olds in each of five South and East Mediterranean countries (Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia). The results show gender differences in uses of free time widening, and differences by social class origins weakening but remaining influential throughout the extended youth life stage, while the influence on leisure of levels of educational attainment and labour force experience assist the reproduction of existing social class formations. It is argued that the failure of the "Arab Spring" to trigger wider social and economic transformations in the region is mirrored in young people's uses of leisure which are helping to perpetuate existing divisions, thereby tending to stabilize rather than undermine the region's Arab-Islamic version of modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines how satellite television, the internet and cell phones have entered then spread within Saudi Arabia. We identify the short-term and discuss likely longer term outcomes in a country where, up to now, out-of-home leisure has been unusually restricted and which remains an absolute monarchy. Previous research into young people’s uses of the new media is reviewed, followed by the results of our own investigations into young Saudis’ uses of Twitter, YouTube and religious websites in 2015. We then use our findings from interviews with 23 young Saudi adults to add fine detail to what is known about uses and users of the new media. It is argued that although there has been no change up to now, the new media are very likely to be involved in the spread of support for further liberalization of uses of free time. We note that there has already been a seismic shift in Saudi political culture, which, as power passes to a new generation of young royals and government ministers, all in the context of the country’s need to rebalance its economy, make liberalization of out-of-home free time uses increasingly likely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Writing is different than talking. The author needs a narrative. There has to be a start-point -- a problem or question -- then a body of evidence or argument, which leads to a conclusion. In other words, the writer needs a good story, and it now seems that throughout the history of leisure studies we have been searching for really good stories. There have been five main types of leisure narrative. There are "full frontal" stories about leisure; then stories about different types of leisure. The third type of story is about the leisure of a specific group -- a gender, age or ethnic group or a social class, for example. The fourth story is about the different types of providers of leisure goods and services. Fifth and finally, there are stories about leisure as seen through the prisms of different social theories. We can debate, and there is no need to agree on, which kind of story is best. However, we may conclude, and the story in this paper is that we can conclude, that some stories have better endings than others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess whether European sport has been damaged or adapted during the austerity in public sector and consumer spending that has followed the financial crisis of 2008-2009.Design/methodology/approach Review of literature and data.Findings Sport has adapted successfully.Research limitations/implications The overall conclusions will not apply to every sport in every country.Practical implications Sport flourishes when it adapts to historical trends.Originality/value Updates all previous reviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assembles time series data on leisure participation rates and expenditure to assess the impact of recessions in the UK during and since the 1980s, and the widening of social class disparities in income since then. It shows that in both cases there have been clear impacts on leisure spending, but to a lesser and variable extent on participation in leisure activities. The conclusions that are drawn highlight weaknesses in the data currently available to leisure scholars, specifically the limited time series and the absence of a limited number of key indicators of leisure use. An important feature of leisure itself is also highlighted: specifically the stability of participation rates over extended periods of time. The failure of leisure scholars to address this feature of their subject matter is attributed to its invisibility before time series are constructed and examined. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper argues that by focusing on 'little leisures' (sport, tourism and so on, leisure that is serious or casual, or leisure that produces 'flow', or on the specifics of the leisure of selected socio-demographic groups), leisure studies lose sight of the truly consequential outcomes from leisure. It is argued that explaining the ways in which leisure as a whole has grown, and has not grown, and also the relative freedom of individuals to choose how to use their leisure time and money, becomes possible only when we recognise that performing what in reality are leisure's main societal functions (enhancing well-being, maintaining consumer demand and expressing identities) are conditional on most of the details of people's leisure choices being relatively inconsequential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that Central Asian youth share more commonalities than differences vis-a-vis young people in other ex-Communist countries. The common features include high rates of unemployment and under-employment, associated poverty and a propensity to become pendulum migrants. Meanwhile, as elsewhere, rates of participation in higher education have risen spectacularly in parts of Central Asia. Central Asia has been part of a global trend towards later marriages and lower rates of fertility, although the region's young people still tend to marry earlier and parent more children than in other parts of the ex-USSR. As elsewhere, Central Asian youth have lost most of the provisions for leisure activities formerly offered by state and Communist Party organizations. These have been replaced by relatively patchy provisions by NGOs, and commercial facilities that are beyond the means of most young people. The article argues that the most distinctive feature of youth in Central Asia is citizenship in newly independent states with no prior history of statehood, hence their difficulties in achieving a collective identity. This has created a metaphorical market place in identities. What young people share with youth throughout East-Central Europe and Eurasia is a dominant personal aspiration; namely, to join their countries' new middle classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the contemporary policy debate on the effect of employment policies on a society's leisure. It cites that employment policies can improve society's leisure as the work-leisure relationship was the midwife of leisure. It mentions that leisure was first studied seriously as a sub-branch of the long arm of the job in sociology. It states that work fixes key parameters in society as a whole, and in the lives of individuals including the amounts of time and money available for leisure, and scheduling.

This paper reports findings from interview surveys with 1215 respondents, split between the capital cities (Yerevan, Baku and Tbilisi) and one non-capital region (Kotayk, Aran-Mugan and Shida Kartli) in each of the three South Caucasus countries - Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. The respondents, who were drawn from households in larger representative household social surveys, were all born between 1970 and 1976 and were aged 31-37 at the time of the fieldwork in 2007. Their life stage transitions from childhood to adulthood had roughly coincided with their countries' transitions from communism to post-communism. Data was collected on the samples' participation in selected leisure activities from age 16 to 30. Similar data was collected on the samples' careers in education, the labour market, housing and family relationships. This information enables us to identify typical leisure careers and how their development was affected by events in other life domains, all in the context of the macro-changes that were in process in each of the research locations. The evidence enables both personal leisure careers and aggregate leisure trends in different socio-demographic groups to be identified This shows that changes in leisure behaviour between age 16 and 30 were neither widening nor narrowing the differences between the leisure of males and females, or those who married and became parents on the one hand, then, on the other, those who were still single and childless at age 30. In contrast, differences by place, and by social class, grew progressively wider, thus raising the social costs of geographical and social mobility. Changes in leisure behaviour between age 16 and 30 were separating young adults into those who participated in little, if any, structured out-of-home leisure, whose main leisure spending, if any, was on alcohol and tobacco (typically consumed in homes and neighbourhoods), and those whose leisure was characterised by relatively high and sustained participation in sport, consumption of high culture, and going out to bars, cafes, cinema, discos, etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information on the original design of the traditional youth services in Great Britain. Relative to this, it is inferred that there is a significant need for the youths' leisure to be set into a longer historical context more particularly if its focus is on the government policies. Historically, young people's leisure in the 1930s though said to have relevantly progressed seemed not clearly revealed. However in the post Second World War, teenage affluent became the catalyst to an accelerated development of young people as much as the access to commercial facilities.

This paper refers to evidence from studies of young adults conducted in eight different ex-communist countries from 1993 onwards, but it is based primarily on data gathered in Ukraine, Georgia and Armenia in 2002. The evidence is used to chart the disintegration of the intelligentsia strata that were consolidated under communism. Members were highly educated and were unified by an intelligentsia lifestyle that included the consumption of state-subsidized high culture and typically involved interest and participation in public affairs. The evidence that is presented shows that under post-communism higher education graduates continue to be distinguished by their consumption of high culture. However, their occupations are more diverse in terms of work and market situations. Many, especially those in the more intellectual occupations, have been impoverished, state subsidies for their lifestyles having been withdrawn or reduced, making their lifestyles more expensive. The better-off are now even more exposed to and involved in the new consumer cultures. This paper explains how the cessation of the intelligentsia's reproduction as a lifestyle group, and the spread of commercial leisure, will have contributed to the post-1989/91 decline in political interest and activity among young people in the former communist countries of eastern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses two questions. Does the leisure evidence indicate the existence of excluded groups in present-day Britain? Do any particular uses of leisure lead to the acquisition of socio-cultural assets that are convertible into, or able to expand and transform into economic assets reflected in labour market achievements? The overall pattern of leisure participation in Britain is described: the co-existence of activities in which virtually everyone is involved to some extent and in some way alongside a multitude of minority interests. The sizes of different broad types of leisure activity are then compared, and social class and age are identified as particularly useful predictors of leisure behaviour. The several ways in which leisure tastes and skills may become economic assets are then identified. The article concludes that although there may well be excluded groups in present-day Britain, the concept is unhelpful in analysing the leisure evidence, and that, although appropriate leisure can help some individuals to overcome economic disadvantages, mainstreaming invariably fails: the shape of the occupational structure is the stumbling block. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]