“Risky” leisure research on sex and violence: Innovation, impact, and impediments (original) (raw)
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Innovation and Impact of Sex as Leisure in Research and Practice: Introduction to the Special Issue
Leisure Sciences, 2020
50 free online copies available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/B8IPFNWTJVIUZPWXTYA6/full?target=10.1080/01490400.2020.1714519 This special issue responds to the need to investigate the complex links between sex and leisure and their implications for research and practice. The focus is on analyzing the complexity of sex as leisure in various socio-cultural and geographical contexts while focusing on pressing sexual issues and vulnerable populations. The articles address the implementation of a positive sexuality framework for guiding leisure research; sexual play and sex toys based on consumer experience perspectives; using the leisure lens to analyze sex and pornography addiction; quadriplegic sexuality and leisure; rejection and resilience on a gay cruise; relational dynamics of aging, exploitation, and deceit in sex tourism; sexual harassment of solo female travelers; and the complexity of consent in the sexualized leisure space of a pornography expo. This issue will be of general interest to the audience interested in interdisciplinary scholarship as it critically broadens the bio-psycho-socio-cultural perspective of sex as leisure.
Innovation and Impact of Sex as Leisure in Research and Practice
Routledge eBooks, 2022
This special issue responds to the need to investigate the complex links between sex and leisure and their implications for research and practice. The focus is on analyzing the complexity of sex as leisure in various socio-cultural and geographical contexts while focusing on pressing sexual issues and vulnerable populations. The articles address the implementation of a positive sexuality framework for guiding leisure research; sexual play and sex toys based on consumer experience perspectives; using the leisure lens to analyze sex and pornography addiction; quadriplegic sexuality and leisure; rejection and resilience on a gay cruise; relational dynamics of aging, exploitation, and deceit in sex tourism; sexual harassment of solo female travelers; and the complexity of consent in the sexualized leisure space of a pornography expo. This issue will be of general interest to the audience interested in interdisciplinary scholarship as it critically broadens the bio-psycho-socio-cultural perspective of sex as leisure.
Leisure Sciences, 2023
It has been noted that crime and enforcement are likely a defining part of an evolving leisure experience. The aims of this manuscript were to call for research to focus on this phenomenon of the shooting and killing of people, particularly Black citizenry, by law enforcement. State sanctioned violence has been consistently wrought in leisure spaces and settings since those 2014–2015 deaths that were noted previously in a Leisure Sciences article, “The Case of the 12-year-old Boy: Or, the Silence of and Relevance to Leisure Research.” An understanding of policing, not police officers, as tool for surveillance and control along with an understanding of society, not on individualized or small group social behavior are the needs in the research of a legitimate lethal and trauma-inducing phenomenon that occurs within the space, time, and activities of leisure, sport, and tourism.
There is a growing interest among leisure scholars to investigate a wide range of diverse sexual topics from a leisure science perspective. However, leisure experts sometimes struggle with issues surrounding their topics that are firmly rooted in broader sociohistorical controversies. Indeed, these controversies continue to play out in fierce academic and professional battles, referred to as the "sex wars," that began several decades ago. Recently, there has been a call among some sexologists and health experts to move toward a much more positive approach to sexuality, which acknowledges well-known risks and dangers of sexual behavior, yet also emphasizes the importance of sexual pleasure and potential benefits of sexual behavior and expression. This paper summarizes current academic literature on the need for positive approaches to sexuality and outlines a multidisciplinary eight-dimensional positive sexuality framework. Existing connections between positive sexuality and leisure scholarship are illustrated.
A 12-year-old boy is shot in a public park on the grounds of being a threat, yet despite the locational relevance there was a silence within leisure research. With this in mind, the aim of this manuscript is a manifesto on the manner that leisure-related research on race, social justice, quality of life, and leisure studies (more broadly, as an academy) must confront the silence with dealing with racism as structural and systematic. If we are to advocate in varying ways on the right of populations to enjoy the life sustaining opportunities that are afforded to them as citizens through leisure, then we must also hold ourselves accountable when those very leisure settings fail to deliver on that promise, and become life-threatening. Tamir Rice, is a case of the duality of silence on the structural nature of racism while also an opportunity to assert a social relevance for leisure research. KEYWORDS: Tamir Rice, Race, social justice, racial threat theory, color-blind racial ideology
DEVIANT LEISURE: A CRIMINOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
This article explains why an understanding of deviant leisure is significant for criminology. Through reorienting our understanding of 'deviance' from a contravention of norms and values to encompassing engagement in behavior and actions that contravene a moral 'duty to the other', the new 'deviant leisure' perspective outlined here, describes activities that through their adherence to cultural values inscribed by consumer capitalism, have the potential to result in harm. Using the ideological primacy of consumer capitalism as a point of departure, we explore the potential for harm that lies beneath the surface of even the most embedded and culturally accepted forms of leisure. Such an explanation requires a reading that brings into focus the subjective, socially corrosive, environmental and embedded harms that arise as a result of the commodification of leisure. In this way, this article aims to act as a conceptual foundation for diverse yet coherent research into deviant leisure.
Drawing upon insights from governmentality studies and risk theory this article explores how family leisure practices are governed through discourses about obesity and healthy lifestyles that circulate in Australian policies, institutions and popular culture. It argues that leisure practices are increasingly governed by discourses of risk calculation and moral responsibility within the context of the new prudentialism that characterises neo-liberal societies. Contemporary notions of freedom are produced through responsibilised leisure practices that emphasise particular kinds of individual and family conduct deemed important to a healthy lifestyle. Within Australian representations of the obesity problem and solutions there persists a heteronormative view of family life in which women are positioned as responsible for health. Lifestyle discourses that address risk through healthy leisure prescriptions overlook the effects of gender and class disparities, and in doing so limit the possibilities for different and more inclusive approaches to active living.