Leisure and Positive Psychology: Linking Activities with Positiveness

163 Pages·2015·0.76 MB·English

by  Robert A. Stebbins (auth.)

Leisure and Positive Psychology
DOI: 10.1057/9781137569943.0001
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DOI: 10.1057/9781137569943.0001
Leisure and Positive
Psychology: Linking
Activities with
Positiveness
Robert A. Stebbins
Professor Emeritus, University of Calgary, Canada
DOI: 10.1057/9781137569943.0001
© Robert A. Stebbins 2015
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
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save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
Saff ron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Th e author has asserted his right to be identifi ed as the author of his work
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2015 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,
Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC,
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Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN: 978–1–137–56994–3 PDF
ISBN: 978-1-349-56496-5
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
www.palgrave.com/pivot
doi: 10.1007/978-1-137-56994-3
Contents
Acknowledgments vi
Introduction 1
1 The Serious Leisure Perspective 11
2 Positiveness in the Serious Pursuits 41
3 Interpersonal Relationships 57
4 Contemplation and Spirituality 70
5 Altruism 82
6 Contributions to Community and
Organization 96
7 Quality of Life and Well-Being 110
8 Casual and Project-Based Leisure 123
9 Play and Creativity 133
Conclusion 144
Index 149
DOI: 10.1057/9781137569943.0001 v
Acknowledgments
My sincere thanks go to Vidhya Jayaprakash and the
production team at Newgen Knowledge Works and to
Palgrave Macmillan’s editors Harriet Barker and Amelia
Derkatsch for efficiently shepherding it through the vari-
ous stages of acquisition and production.
vi DOI: 10.1057/9781137569943.0002
Introduction
Abstract: Leisure plays a key role in positive psychology,
though it would be difficult to reach this conclusion from
the infrequency with which the idea surfaces in the field’s
publications and intellectual discussions. This book shows how
theory and research from the interdisciplinary field of leisure
studies, more specifically from the serious leisure perspective
(SLP), can be used to join the two fields, which have so much
to offer each other. Thus, positive interpersonal relationships
and positive emotional and cognitive states and processes –
the stuff of positive psychology – are expressed or realized in
myriad leisure activities (i.e., sets of particular behaviors).
These activities are highly appealing, thereby providing their
own motivational push. Leisure is defined and conceptualized
as a kind of activity. General activities include the pursuit of
certain core activities, which constitute powerful reasons for
engaging in such leisure.
Keywords: activity; agency; leisure; positive psychology;
role; serious leisure perspective
Stebbins, Robert A. Leisure and Positive Psychology:
Linking Activities with Positiveness. Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2015. doi: 10.1057/9781137569943.0003.
DOI: 10.1057/9781137569943.0003 
 Leisure and Positive Psychology
Leisure has a central role to play in positive psychology, though it would
be difficult to reach this conclusion from the infrequency with which the
idea surfaces in the latter field’s publications and intellectual discussions.
This is odd, for many of positive psychology’s most vibrant ideas are
equally prominent in the domain of leisure and its analytic home, leisure
studies. These ideas include flow, fulfillment, altruism, well-being, and
interpersonal relationships. Moreover, there should be much greater
discourse between the two fields, since leisure studies has a variety of
well-validated conceptual tools that can help positive psychology find
its proper and rightful place in the domain of free time. Indeed, until
positive psychology came along, leisure studies could justifiably claim to
be the only positive social science.
This may sound audacious, coming as it is from a sociologist, albeit
one whose minor in graduate studies was psychology (I also took as an
undergraduate a double major in sociology and psychology). More to
the point, however, is that my intellectual base for the past 40 years has
been in leisure studies. It is a broad interdiscipline composed primarily
of psychology and sociology as well as geography, education, economics,
history, and philosophy. As I intend to explain in the following pages,
leisure is a vast domain, and with two other more or less equally vast
domains – work and nonwork obligation – covers every aspect of human
existence. This domainal framework is set out elsewhere (Stebbins, 2009,
chap. 1), where I also present a positive sociology as inspired by the
advances in the study of positiveness made in positive psychology.
What has become clear to me over the past 40 years is that leisure is
an important feature of many areas of life, some of which might appear
at first blush to be unrelated. By way of example, consider therapeutic
recreation, where leisure is used to help people with disabilities find
an agreeable lifestyle. Consider arts and science administration, where
volunteers make significant contributions as instructors and members
of boards of directors. Consider library and information science, where
leisure theory is helping specialists understand how information is gath-
ered and disseminated in that domain of free time. Consider tourism
studies and event analysis, where participants, all in search of some kind
of leisure, have a range of different motives for spending their free time
here. In brief, the study of leisure has since around 1970 resulted in a
solid and widely applicable body of knowledge.
This book shows how theory and research from the interdiscipline
of leisure studies, more specifically from the serious leisure perspective
DOI: 10.1057/9781137569943.0003
Introduction 
(SLP), can be used to join the two fields, which have so much to offer
each other. In this regard the present book may be seen as a next step
following on Teresa Freire’s Positive Leisure Science (2013). Her anthology
shows generally the critical role of leisure in the study and application
of positiveness. In the present volume I want to link, in more particular
fashion, the SLP, its central concept of activity, and positive psychology.
Bear in mind that this is in no way an attempt to merge the two fields
theoretically and empirically into one overarching conceptual frame-
work. This would be an immense undertaking and, at this stage of their
development, very probably an impossible one.
Why use the SLP to meet this goal? One reason, perhaps selfish, is
that I have been its prime mover since its inception in 1973 (a short
history is available at www.seriousleisure.net). We academics find much
positiveness in promoting our own ideas. More important for this book,
however, is that this perspective is the only theoretic framework in
leisure studies that bears in some way on most, if not all, of that field. It
offers the widest lens for viewing leisure, even while a number of other
theories offer more detailed looks at certain aspects of it (e.g., leisure
constraints, recreational specialization, and social-class analysis).
I will argue that positive interpersonal relationships and positive
emotional and cognitive states and processes – the stuff of positive
psychology – are expressed or realized in myriad leisure activities (i.e.,
sets of particular behaviors). These activities are highly appealing,
thereby providing their own motivational push. The more complicated
of them (the serious pursuits) are, in turn, rooted in surrounding social
worlds of people, groups, organizations, services, and a unique history. A
powerful personal and social identity typically follows from involvement
in these activities.
What is leisure?
Leisure is uncoerced, contextually framed activity engaged in during free
time, which people want to do and, using their abilities and resources,
actually do in either a satisfying or a fulfilling way, if not both (the
definition of leisure is considered at length in Stebbins, 2012, p. 4). “Free
time” in this definition is time away from unpleasant, or disagreeable,
obligation, with pleasant obligation being treated of here as essentially
leisure. In other words homo otiosus (Stebbins, 2013), leisure man, feels
DOI: 10.1057/9781137569943.0003