From otium to opium (and back again?): Lockdown’s leisure industry, hypersynchronisation and the philosophy of walking (original) (raw)
Related papers
A People's Future of Leisure Studies: Leisure with the Enemy Under COVID-19
Leisure Sciences, 2020
To those of us who have been consistently critical of leisure, we have mapped our critique of leisure onto discussions of leisure as a concept, as a tool, or as a social construct in society that has had serious implications on the gendered, the racialized, and the classed as disposable. Leisure is a life-politic that hides: dominant lifestyles, harmful environmental engagement, and political regimes. But in the midst of pandemic, there are two enemies, at the mirco- and macro-level to the life of a person via leisure that are becoming exposed at this time: 1) Person to Person; and, 2) The State to Person. With the coronavirus pandemic, it reveals a need to depart from a happiness and titillation orientation of leisure, and more a collective life-giving requisite in our research, instruction, and advocacy. For with COVID-19, leisure (as it is predominantly conceived) is the enemy.
International Journal of Social Sciences and Educational Studies, 2021
Claustropolitanism as a new theory for foreclosed times. A theory for the end of the world, it resonates in research probing the Global Financial Crisis, but has reached a moment of profound utility through Covid and the resultant social, economic, health and political catastrophes. Capitalism, Covid and claustropolitanism align to offer a pointed provocation and recalibration of hierarchies of value, importance, relevance, and social change. The result of this reconfiguration is the emergence of un/popular culture. This article, applying the insights of deviant leisure and digitization, probes the changing role of the humanities and social sciences, with the promising opportunity to 'Make the end of the world great again.'
Cultural leisure in the time of COVID-19: impressions from the Netherlands
World Leisure Journal
Amongst leisure practices, culture plays a fundamental role in the leisure landscape. Leisure provides opportunities for escaping daily routines of work and care, and contributes to expanding knowledge, skills and sense of belonging and self-realization. But what happens to leisure, and cultural leisure in the face of extreme scenarios? This article takes a closer looks at the city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, asking in general 1) what we can observe in cultural leisure in times of COVID-19, and, more specifically, 2) how cultural leisure practices have changed amongst students, in particular during times of pandemic. Students feel they are spending much more time studying, which has seemingly resulted in a subjective experience of increased uneasiness and even meaninglessness that pervades their daily lives. The shift in leisure practices and timings, as well as perception of time and actual time management, are seemingly disrupting normal student life. Students also benefited from digital cultural initiatives by artists, museums, festivals, and other cultural agents. The constraints of the lockdown also propelled forms of creativity in their leisure practices.
Pandemic Leisure - Mehnaaz Momen
Covid19 Pandemic: Life and Living, 2021
The Bible states that God made the world in six days and took rest on the seventh day. Was it to recuperate from the hard work? Was it to relax and admire the creation? Was taking that break necessary? Was it only for pleasure? If we take a close look at Western (Christian) societies where “Sunday” was a holy day (non-working day) and how it is now regarded as the day of recreation (holiday) as well as for catching up with lost work, or for some people simply a day of work, we get a glimpse into the evolving meaning of leisure. This chapter traces the transformation in our understanding of leisure and how it has influenced our notion of who deserves leisure under the socioeconomic arrangements of the twenty-first century. Against this backdrop, it analyzes how pandemic leisure is being constructed as a new form of cultural capital, undermining several sectors of labour and prioritising mostly technology-oriented sectors in the traumatic unfolding of the global COVID-19 crisis.
Urban Walking – a Subversive Staged Experience ? The Post-heroic Flâneur under Observation
2019
On the one hand, for decades there has been a growing interest in urban walking as an authentic physical, creative or subversive spatial experience. On the other hand, cities as well as different walking practices are more and more staged, are part of mediatized, as well as market-oriented city scenarios or artistic image productions. Thus urban strolling appears increasingly to be a theatreor filmlike experience. The text discusses the ambivalence and complexity of today’s walking practices and re-evaluates their meaning ranging from resistance to consumerism, referring to the historical concept of the flâneur as well as to the current phenomenon of a postheroic urban stroller. Examples from film, fine arts and literature from recent decades, illustrating paradoxical walking concepts, are used for analysis; a special focus is placed on Bertrand Bonello’s film Nocturama, Albrecht Selge’s novel Wach and Valérie Jouve’s photo series Les Passants and Les Personnages.
On Not Knowing: COVID-19 and Decolonizing Leisure Research
Leisure Sciences, 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic has enfolded waves of uncertainty-intense doses of not knowing-into our daily experience. In this commentary, I stutter into the discomfort of not knowing as a mode of relation. Recognizing that the collective uncertainty surrounding the pandemic has marshaled vital desires to know how to respond, to cope, and even to survive, I think and write toward productive possibilities that arise when we tune attention away from knowing more and knowing better. The journey I take hitches to conceptual anchor points from settler colonial studies, and to moments of personal upheaval associated with both the current pandemic and learning to take responsibility for settler colonization. As I navigate this route of not knowing, I churn up potential decolonizing pathways for leisure researchers to debate, discard, pick up, or move through.
Terror, Leisure and Consumption: Spaces for Harm in a Post-Crash Era
2018
Leisure has many competing definitions as its practices and composition have evolved over time. Conventional renderings of leisure place it as '"residual time" left over outside of working hours' (Tucker, 1993, p. 16). However, as working hours have changed, definitions of leisure are in flux. The rise of a 'leisure industry' interfacing with contemporary notions of 'lifestyle' intersects popular culture, consumption and capital, to commodify time and space, interest and enthusiasm. During industrialism leisure was fought for as a space for self-determination, first encoded as personal time to pursue intimate or local interests and then later, to enable workers to enter into the consumer landscape of the middle class by indulging in public and semi-private pastimes that increasingly engaged cultures of exchange. The commodification of leisure has stimulated conspicuous consumption in the pursuit of pleasure and sensation, as shopping, purchase and exchange whether in tourism, serious leisure pursuits, listening to music or any other of the expanding myriad of
Urban Walking – a Subversive Staged Experience?
2019
On the one hand, for decades there has been a growing interest in urban walking as an authentic physical, creative or subversive spatial experience. On the other hand, cities as well as different walking practices are more and more staged, are part of mediatized, as well as market-oriented city scenarios or artistic image productions. Thus urban strolling appears increasingly to be a theatre- or film-like experience. The text discusses the ambivalence and complexity of today's walking practices and re-evaluates their meaning ranging from resistance to consumerism, referring to the historical concept of the flâneur as well as to the current phenomenon of a post-heroic urban stroller. Examples from film, fine arts and literature from recent decades, illustrating paradoxical walking concepts, are used for analysis; a special focus is placed on Bertrand Bonello's film Nocturama, Albrecht Selge's novel Wach and Valérie Jouve's photo series Les Passants and Les Personnages.
Thinking about leisure during a global pandemic
World Leisure Journal
The COVID-19 pandemic arrested the world in a dramatic manner as of March 2020. As countries placed themselves under lockdown to avoid the worst case scenarios expected from the novel virus, we witnessed economies shut down, and residents of the smallest communities to the largest cities 'shelter in place' as they could. Very quickly, a smorgasbord of disparities and privileges were highlighted and discussions, at local and global levels, began in earnest. This moment is significant in terms of providing us with insights borne of this unique opportunity to better understand diverse aspects of life on this planet, not least our knowledge of climate change and demographic vulnerabilities, but also about the state of leisure. The following Observation Paper presents a few leisure-related insights gained during the spring and summer of 2020 in Canada.
From Spectatorship to “Survivorship” in Five Critical Propositions
Film Quarterly, 2022
Often theorized through the negative framework of addiction or passivity, binge-watching has been transformed into a civic duty and a mode of survival during the COVID-19 pandemic. Exploring this recent plot-twist in bingeing scholarship, this article proposes five new ways to study the most dominant spectatorial mode under corona-capitalism.