Rudy Dunlap

Taking Aunt Kathy to Dinner: Family Dinner as a Focal Practice

An ethnographic methodology is used to describe the intersection of leisure practices and the lived experience of community within the context of a communal farm, known as the Farm. This manuscript focuses specifically on a leisure practice known as Family Dinner where members of the extended Farm community gathered for a weekly potluck-style meal. When conviviality is understood as a proxy for leisure, Family Dinner is seen as a type of informal leisure experience whereby participants are acculturated and disciplined into certain cultural practices. Communal meals are examined as leisure practices that showcase the accumulation of cultural capital related to food. The studys findings have implications for future analyses of power dynamics within the context of informal leisure practices.

Korean American males' serious leisure experiences and their perceptions of different play styles.

This study examined Koreans Americans’ serious leisure experience with different racial groups. Interviews were conducted with 15 Korean male basketball and soccer players. A key finding was that participants recognized different styles of play between Korean Americans and other racial groups. While some participants cared little about other players’ race/ethnicity, other participants played exclusively with Korean Americans and preserved or promoted their ethnic identity. While Stebbins (1982) argues that serious leisure provides eight durable benefits, our findings suggest self-identification may be another durable benefit, at least among ethnic and/or racial minorities.

Recreating culture: Slow Food as a leisure education movement

Though seemingly concerned only with food and agriculture, Slow Food ought to also be understood as a movement that addresses crises in societies’ use of leisure. Specifically, mealtime is examined as a site of conflict between gastronomic cultural traditions and the efficiency, standardisation, and profit-imperative of the global food infrastructure. Drawing on recent reconstructions of scholé, this paper examines Slow Food as an organisation that promotes a critical and reflective leisure practice in the form of eating. Specifically, it seeks to recreate gastronomic culture by facilitating meal experiences that are convivial, mindful, and ethical. Understood in this way, Slow Foods mission and methodology have important implications for reconstructing the concept of leisure education in contemporary society.

Creating community at the farm: a contested concept.

Abstract This ethnography explores the competing concepts of community that are deployed within the context of a communal farm. Residents of the Farm articulate oppositional concepts of community that are based on familial and instrumental relationships. The concepts of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft are utilized to better understand the manner in which these discourses manifest themselves in the lived experiences of Farm residents. The contradictory nature of these conceptualizations suggests that the concept of community cannot be treated as a monolithic reality within scholarly inquiry.

The Implication of Bourdieu's Theory of Practice for Leisure Studies

The purpose of this article is to illustrate the effectiveness of Pierre Bourdieus sociological theory and encourage more holistic use of his concepts of habitus, capital, field, and symbolic violence in leisure research. We briefly review the manner in which leisure researchers have utilized Bourdieus work. Second, we apply Bourdieus notions of habitus, capital, field, and symbolic violence to understand inequitable participation in hunting activities in American society. We conclude by offering recent issues in recreational hunting and recommendations for practitioners based on interpretations of Bourdieus concepts.

Growing in place: the interplay of urban agriculture and place sentiment

In this investigation, we drew from social constructivist understandings of place to explore both the meanings participants of an urban garden project in Austin, Texas, ascribed to place and the sentiment they attached to those meanings. Specifically, we asked participants to articulate the ways in which their participation was shaped by and/or had subsequently affected their feelings toward a given garden plot, neighbourhood, city, and/or the region of Central Texas. Our findings illustrate that participation in the gardening project shaped their place meanings and sentiment through two principal processes: (1) a sense of connection to the different garden plots through the resulting produce and the physical transformation of the site, and (2) a sense of connection to and identification with the community at large via links to other individuals who are involved in Urban Patchwork activities.

Playin’ farmer: leisure experiences in a craft-based community of practice

The study applies situated learning and communities of practice concepts to an ethnographic study of volunteer farm work. In contrast to a traditional conceptualization of education for leisure, participation in farm work activities is understood as a form of education taking place in a leisure context. Analysis reveals that participation in volunteer farm labor may also be understood as participation in a craft-based community of practice. The Farm’s community of practice exhibits the use of embodied knowledge, intimate communication, a dialectic of innovation and preservation, and a hierarchical social structure. Differences between employment and leisure-based communities of practices are explored. Situated learning and communities of practice conceptualizations promise to expand both the analysis and practice of leisure education, thereby expanding its relevance in contemporary society.

What Would Veblen Wear

Veblens Theory of the Leisure Class is largely based on his explication of emulation whereby individuals of lower status imitate people of higher status. The proliferation of identity categories and the democratization of consumer credit complicate the application of emulation to contemporary consumer behavior. Veblen is ill-equipped to describe consumption related to social categories such as race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual identity. The phenomenon of dressing down within dominant American culture reveals the limits of Veblens ideas when applied to less privileged social categories. An exclusive focus on individual choices ignores the interaction of structure and agency that characterizes the practice of consumption in contemporary society.