Maureen Anne Harrington

Objective and Subjective Constraints on Women's Enjoyment of Leisure

Abstract Recognizing the male bias in previous leisure theory and research, feminist researchers have introduced new conceptualizations to address the gender-based issues of womens entitlement to leisure and the particularized nature of constraints to their leisure. Concepts of the “common world” of women, an “ethic of care” for others and a lack of a “sense of entitlement” to leisure have been useful to explain the ways in which womens experience of leisure is constrained in both external and internal ways. This study measures the separate effects of objective (i.e. external) and subjective (i.e. internal) constraints on the leisure enjoyment of women. Objective and subjective items were constructed for twelve categories of constraints on leisure and were included in a mailed survey of the adult women in Ontario. More than half the sample indicated experiencing an equal or greater number of subjective rather than objective constraints. The most frequently reported objective constraints were time, respo...

Sport and leisure as contexts for fathering in Australian families.

Abstract The relationships that fathers have with their family in leisure contexts are reflected in their leisure and sport repertoires and identities. Family‐based leisure relationships are one significant mode through which they express connectedness with their children. This article builds on feminist studies of gendered leisure relations in families, and rejects approaches that conflate mothers’ and fathers’ experiences and meanings of family leisure into that of ‘parents’. In contrast it focuses on fathers’ gendered experience of family leisure to further our understanding of what ‘playing’ with children means in relation to the identity construction of fatherhood. It considers the nexus between fathers’ own leisure and sport repertoires, their understanding of their children’s identities and leisure needs, and their involvement in shared family leisure and their children’s leisure and sport activities. This article is based on a larger qualitative study of mothers, fathers and children in 28 Australian families. Both parents in each family were interviewed about their leisure involvements, children’s leisure activities and what they felt was the meaning and importance of family leisure. At least one child 10 years and older in each family was also interviewed. In addition a seven‐day diary was also used by parents (most usually mothers) to record the leisure activities of all family members prior to the interviews. Four themes emerged in the analysis of the interviews with fathers in the study. These themes were: the importance for fathers of being with children and doing leisure as a family; the family paradigm and fathering through the generations; sport as a dominant but not the only cultural context for fathering; and other leisure contexts in which non‐sporting fathers construct their fatherhood identity. The study suggests the possibility that for some Australian fathers, sport and leisure contexts as both physical and social spaces enable men to do the identity work of being an involved or ‘generative’ (i.e. guiding the next generation) father.

Changing Levels of Organizational Commitment amongst Sport Volunteers: A Serious Leisure Approach

Abstract Taking a serious leisure approach, a sample of volunteer administrators in community sport organizations were surveyed about their level of organizational commitment and their reasons for initially volunteering and continuing to volunteer. The aim was to explore the dynamics of changing levels of commitment in relation to initially volunteering and continuing to volunteer. Based on their reasons for volunteering, the respondents were categorized as either marginal or career volunteers on two separate occasions. For many respondents, their reasons for volunteering changed from when they initially volunteered to the reasons they had for continuing. Levels of organizational commitment also changed over time and declined for both marginal and career volunteers, but the results suggested that career volunteers are more highly committed than their marginal counterparts. It was concluded that, from time to time, volunteers may re‐evaluate their reasons for volunteering and that as their reasons for volunteering change, so does their level of organizational commitment. Though less committed than career volunteers, marginal volunteers who continued to volunteer held a positive attitude toward their community sport organization.

Predicting the behavioral dependability of sport event volunteers

The dependability of volunteers in completing work assignments can impact upon the financial and operational success of major sport events and presents a significant challenge for event organizers. Despite the short-term nature of many events and the apparently manageable level of commitment, volunteers sometimes exhibit less than satisfactory levels of compliance to assigned tasks. Based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB), this study examined the behavioral dependability of operational-level volunteers at major sport events. A preevent and postevent survey protocol was used to gather data from volunteers (n = 391) at five events. The study measured the attitudes and beliefs of event volunteers and their self-reported level of behavioral dependability. Using multiple regression analysis, the study found that a number of attitudinal beliefs about volunteering, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control predicted behavioral dependability. It was concluded that the TPB was a useful theoretical framework for conceptualizing and predicting the behavior of major event volunteers but the generalizability of these findings was limited because the significant predictors of dependability were not consistent across all of the events studied.

Volunteers and leisure: Evidence of marginal and career volunteerism in sport.

(1997). VOLUNTEERS AND LEISURE: EVIDENCE OF MARGINAL AND CAREER VOLUNTEERISM IN SPORT. World Leisure & Recreation: Vol. 39, No. 3, pp. 11-18.

Career volunteering in commodity-intensive serious leisure: motorsport events and their dependence on volunteers/amateurs.

RESUMELa principale motivation du benevolat dans le domaine des loisirs est le desir d’avoir une experience recreative. Cependant, un engagement soutenu dans le travail benevole ( « benevolat professionnel »), l’amateurisme et les activites recreatives ont en commun les traits des « loisirs serieux » (Stebbins, 1997b), et avec le temps, de tels enthousiastes en viennent a partager le meme monde social (Unruh, 1979; Stebbins, 1997a). Stebbins a concu le modele des loisirs serieux a trois composantes independantes – les professionnels, les amateurs et les publics (le systeme P-A-P) – pour analyser les univers sociaux des amateurs. Yoder (1997) a modifie ce systeme en remplacant les « agents professionnels / agents de services » et « amateurs / publics » du modele de Stebbin. La presente recherche examine la pertinence des travaux de Yoder pour une etude des benevoles amateurs de la course Queensland 500 V8 SuperCar qui ont ete interroges sur la nature de leurs activites benevoles dans le cadre des sports mo...

Practices and meaning of purposive family leisure among working- and middle-class families

This article explores the relationship between purposive family leisure and social class in Australian families. A brief review of family leisure literature is followed by a review of conceptual developments in family sociology and the new sociology of class in order to build a richer conceptual and theoretical base for exploring purposive family leisure. Qualitative data are reported from semi-structured interviews with parents in 28 working- and middle-class families in Brisbane, Australia. An analysis of family leisure practices show differences in what constitutes family leisure and its display. Moreover, parents’ stated intentions for engaging in family leisure practices suggest that there is a classed dimension to purposive leisure, in that working- and middle-class parents emphasise different values and imagined futures for their children.

Challenges for active living provision in an era of healthism

The rationalities of advanced liberalism shape the call for people to be more responsible for ‘being active and eating well’ [Dean, M. (1999). Governmentality: Power and rule in modern society. London: Sage; Petersen, A., & Lupton, D. (1997). The new public health. London: Sage], even those living with social disadvantage. We draw upon qualitative data to examine how sport and recreation policy and program officers within state and local levels of government frame and interpret the ‘active living imperative’ for healthy lifestyles. Our analysis identified major policy tensions between different levels of government that directly affect the success of government initiatives to increase physical activity. We present our analysis of four main themes: (1) the rise of the health agenda in sport and recreation policy and sport and recreation services enhanced role in health promotion; (2) the obesity epidemic as the instigator for the policy shift in sport and recreation; (3) tensions between government agendas and competing priorities; and (4) governments’ proposed solutions to support active leisure in communities. Our analysis of the sport/recreation sector revealed competing priorities with the health promotion focus on reducing lifestyle risk and a need for more strategic cooperation between levels of government and different departments.

Managing Volunteers to Enhance Legacy Potential of Major Events

The dependence of major events on volunteer labour is well established. Vol-unteers are an essential component of the success of major events and, more-over, the scale and scope of the event volunteer workforce frequently makes volunteers the most visible element of events and the one with whom most participants and/or spectators interact. For example, the Sydney Olympic Games utilized approximately 47,000 volunteers (SOCOG, 2000) and a fur-ther 15,000 volunteers contributed their skills to Sydney’s Paralympic Games. Cashman (2006), however, reported that the total volunteer workforce for both events was over 70,000. Cuskelly et al. (2006) also indicated that the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games and the 2006 Doha Asian Games each utilized more than 15,000 volunteers and that even single-sport events, such as the 2007 Rugby World Cup (3000 volunteers) and the 2007 ICC Cricket World Cup (3500 volunteers), require considerable numbers of volun-teers. Furthermore, there has been a trend of increasing involvement of volun-teers in events. This includes the operations of the Olympic Games, where there were around 28,000 volunteers at the 1984 Los Angeles and 1988 Seoul Summer Games compared with an estimated 60,000 at the 2004 Athens Olympics and 100,000 at Beijing in 2008, with the latter two including both Olympic and Paralympic Games volunteers (Karlis, 2003). While the Winter Olympics have fewer volunteers than their summer counterpart, they have also demonstrated a trend towards an increasing level of volunteer engage-ment (from just under 7000 at Lake Placid in 1980 to an estimated 20,000 in Turin in 2006).

Negotiating the policy imperative to be healthy:Australian family repertoires of risk, leisure, and healthy lifestyles

Abstract This article offers a sociological analysis of how different lowermiddle income families engage with Australian government health policies and promotion campaigns aimed at reducing the risk of lifestyle disease (eat well, be active). Bringing together sociological literature across the domains of leisure, family, health, and risk we identify tensions between the purposes of health promotion and purposive family leisure. Findings are presented from a qualitative study conducted with 21 adults and children in four families (nuclear, same‐sex, single parent, blended) which identify discursive constructions of family leisure time, health, and risk. Three key themes were identified within the family leisure repertoires that included tensions between purposive health and leisure goals, the importance of emotional relationships, and the calculation of risk and benefit. The effect of class, gender, and sexuality was also evident in different family constructions of leisure meanings, opportunity, and ability to respond to the individualised responsibility inherent in healthy lifestyle policy. Our critical engagement with healthy lifestyle discourses opens up a range of issues for leisure research, policy, and provision that embraces a more complex understanding of the social forces shaping family well‐being.