Leisure Books

The burgeoning social scientific study of tourism has emphasized the effects of the post-industrial economy on travel and place. However, this volume takes some of these issues into a different area of leisure: the spare-time carved out by people as part of their everyday lives - time that is much more intimately juxtaposed with the pressures and influences of work life, and which often involves specific bodily practices associated with hobbies and sports. An important focus of the book is the body as a site of identity formation, experience, and disciplined recreation of the self. Contributors examine the ways rituals, sports, and forms of bodily transformation mediate between contemporary ideologies of freedom, choice and self-control.

Tamara Kohn is Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Melbourne. She has conducted research in Scotland, Nepal, and California. Publications include Extending the Boundaries of ’Care’ (1999, ed. with R. McKechnie), Becoming an Islander through Action in the Scottish Hebrides - JRAI 8/1: 143-158 (2002), The Aikido Body: Expressions of Group Identities and Self-discovery in Martial Arts Training in Dyck and Archetti (eds) Sport, Dance and Embodied Identities (Berg 2003).