Introduction: Special Issue: Alcohol and Leisure, Sport and Tourism

Abstract

As the world grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic, leisure has taken on new significance. Major sporting events have been cancelled, rescheduled or reimagined for a new “COVID normal”. Almost all places outside our homes – restaurants, pubs, bars and nightclubs, swimming pools, gyms, arts venues, theatres, cinemas, museums and galleries – are not open. Playground equipment is taped off and parks and beaches are closed too. In only a matter of months, the COVID-19 pandemic raised questions about what we value and why. What, then, is the importance (or not) of leisure in this crisis? At the same time, alcohol use and misuse has taken on a particular importance as we wrestle with the ways in which the pandemic has either introduced new or exacerbated old problems associated with alcohol consumption especially for vulnerable people and people in regional communities. The ready accessibility of home delivery, the absence of checks-and-balances in online purchases, and the ability to consume alcohol at home without monitoring, all present a set of challenges for those struggling with addiction and mental health, exacerbated by job lay-offs, with sportsworkers a key, but largely ignored, group. As alcohol consumption and production increases in a range of cultural contexts and settings, so to does academic interest by sociologists and other social scientists of leisure, sport and tourism. Against this background, the significance of critical perspectives for understanding many aspects of alcohol and its relationships to leisure, sport and tourism has become more acute. As a broad field bringing together a diverse range of theoretical and methodological stand points, the sociology of leisure provides a set of perspectives on this current moment, particularly the impacts on sociality across individual and community experiences of sport, leisure and tourism. While the special issue was not commissioned to address or speculate on the implications of COVID-19 on leisure, sport and tourism, the pandemic casts an