Ken Roberts

Leisure in contemporary society.

* Leisure: Past and Present * The Growth of Leisure * Work and Leisure * Gender * The Life Course * Lifestyles and Identities * Consumption and Consumerism * The Transformation of Leisure?

The Entry into Employment: An Approach towards a General Theory

R epresentatives of various disciplines including psychology, economics and education have all examined die entry into employment. They have all defined their own particular problems that the subject matter poses and have attempted to answer them. Before the sociologist enters the field it appears sensible that he should first define his particular interests in the subject. If confusion is to be avoided the questions that the sociologist hopes to answer as a result of his examinations of the entry into employment need to be clearly declared in advance. I would like to suggest that the entry into employment embodies two major social processes. Firstly school-leavers must be differentiated and placed in their various roles within the occupational system, and secondly they must be induced to accept their new r61es as workers in the specific occupations to which they have been allocated. These processes must take place during the entry into employment in any society with a complex division of labour and in which childhood r61es are not precisely articulated with the specific adult destinations of the young. The sociologists interest in the entry into employment should be focused upon these two processes of occupational rdle allocation and socialisation. We want to obtain an accurate description of how these processes take place, and to explain why they take place in the manner that they do.

Work‐life balance – the sources of the contemporary problem and the probable outcomes: A review and interpretation of the evidence

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to consider why work‐life balance has become a major issue, and the likely outcomes of the widespread dissatisfaction with current work schedules.Design/methodology/approach – The article reviews international evidence on hours of work and time use, and the academic literature on employees’ attitudes towards their hours of work, and perceptions and complaints about work‐life imbalances.Findings – Working time has not lengthened and complaints about time pressure are unrelated to hours actually worked. The sources of the widespread dissatisfaction with current work schedules will lie in a combination of other trends – increased labour market participation by women, work intensification, the spread of feelings of job insecurity, more work being done at odd hours, the spread of new information and communication technologies, free time increasing more slowly than spending power and aspirations, and relatively long hours becoming most common among employees (and the sel...

The leisure industries

Introduction Voluntary Associations The Public Sector Tourism Sport: Origins and Development Sport: Commercial Inroads Events The Media and Popular Culture The Media: Recent Developments Hospitality Gambling The Arts Leisure Policies Bibliography Index

Young people and lifelong participation in sport and physical activity: a sociological perspective on contemporary physical education programmes in England and Wales

Notwithstanding the apparent consensus in the UK over the last half a century that the ‘key goal’ of physical education (PE) is to prepare young people for lifelong participation in physical activity (Kirk, 2002), it is evident that the types of PE programmes and activities viewed as most likely to achieve this outcome remain a highly contentious issue. Grounded in sociological work on the ‘new condition’ of youth (Roberts, 1999), alongside data from various participation surveys in England and Wales, this paper responds to what is seen as the alleged failure of multi‐activity, sport‐based PE programmes to facilitate lifelong participation in sport and physical activity. It is argued that when developments in PE curricula in England and Wales are considered alongside trends in participation among young people, it is apparent that participation in sport and physical activity has become part of present‐day youth cultures. This may well be due, at least in part, to the ways in which multi‐activity PE programmes have facilitated the development of wide sporting repertoires among young people, by introducing them to a broad range of sports as well as ‘lifestyle activities’.

Young People, Schools, Sport and Government Policies

Abstract This paper compares the policies and assumptions in Sport: Raising the Game, with the findings of three recent national surveys. These show, contrary to the assumptions in the government policy statement, that Englands schools have been increasing, not cutting back on their sports teaching and facilities, and that young people are now playing more sport in and out of school than in earlier decades. Also, the drop‐out rate in late‐adolescence has declined substantially over the last generation which seems to be due mainly to the spread of community provisions rather than the school‐club links whose importance is emphasised in the policy statement. This statement makes no reference to equal opportunities, which may be considered justified by the research findings that social class differences have become blurred, that girls now receive equal treatment in school sport, and the persistence of sex differences in out of school participation is caused by the sexes’ prior orientations rather than their ...

Youth Transitions and Generations: A Response to Wyn and Woodman

Wyn and Woodman (2006) [article indexed at TD/TNC 100.512] have urged shifting youth research away from a transition paradigm to a generation paradigm. The evidence that they marshal in support is mainly from Australia, but their arguments are intended to be relevant throughout the western world. The evidence that I cite below is largely from the [United Kingdom] UK, but this is not the source of any disagreements. The position argued below is that Wyn and Woodman’s proposal is basically unsound. This is despite their admirable intention, which is to promote a better understanding of today’s young people, recognising that their lives are not basically the same as those of the baby-boomers, and that ideas about how young people ought to progress towards adulthood, and policies based on these ideas, which are rooted in ‘what worked’ in the baby-boomer past, need radical revision. I shall argue that, given these intentions, the proposed shift in perspective in youth studies is unnecessary, and that making this shift will damage youth research and diminish its ability to understand and attune social policies to the realities of the lives of young people today.

Same activities, different meanings: British youth cultures in the 1990s

This paper recognizes that there have been important changes in British youth cultures in recent years but argues that, contrary to claims that have been made in debates about a postmodern condition, the changes do not include leisure or consumption based lifestyles now acting as foundations for identity formation. Since the 1970s youth has been prolonged, young peoples experiences have been individualized, their futures have become less certain, and all the steps that they can take towards adulthood have become more risky. These broader changes are related to trends in young peoples leisure; a wider age span is involved in present-day youth scenes; gender and social class differences have blurred; tastes and styles have splintered and leisure activities are now more likely to form their own groups rather than attract pre-existent groups of young people. However, these are all trends, not absolute states, and the main systematic differences in leisure practices are still linked to the old predictors. Li...

Explaining differences in sport participation rates among young adults: Evidence from the South Caucasus

This paper presents and discusses evidence about the sport careers of representative samples of 31—37 year olds from the capital city and a comparator region in each of the three South Caucasus countries —Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. This is one of the few surveys to measure sport participation that allows change over time at the aggregate and individual levels to be distinguished. The evidence suggests that many differences in sport participation rates that are commonly attributed to circumstances and experiences after age 16 (higher education, for example) already exist at age 16, and that family cultures are the source of crucial predispositions to participate which have lasting effects. The evidence, from countries that up to 1991 shared the Soviet education and sport systems, also suggests that ethnic/national cultures that predate communism have outlived communism and are now a major explanation of inter-country differences in rates of sport participation in the South Caucasus. Finally, the evidence indicates that sport facilities do indeed make a difference, but only by enabling those who are predisposed to take part in sport.

Leisure: the importance of being inconsequential

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 leisures main societal functions (enhancing well‐being, maintaining consumer demand and expressing identities) are conditional on most of the details of peoples leisure choices being relatively inconsequential.