This research explores feelings of obligation to volunteer, which lie at the interface of volunteering as simultaneously individual and collective and challenge traditional understandings of volunteering as leisure. The study examined volunteering within the context of communitarianism, particularly how collective outcomes of volunteering are related to feelings of obligation to volunteer. Phase one of this research focused on scale creation of a measure assessing feelings of obligation in the context of volunteerism. Using exploratory factor analyses of data from a student sample, this first phase yielded two measures: an 18-item Obligation to Volunteer as Commitment measure (OVC), encompassing dimensions of reward, affective attachment, flexibility, and side bets; and a 14-item Obligation to Volunteer as Duty measure (OVD), encompassing the dimensions of expectation, burden, and constraint. In phase two, survey research was conducted with 300 volunteers at ten community organizations. These new measures were used to examine relationships between obligation to volunteer and the value orientations of individualism and collectivism, the experience of volunteering as serious leisure, and the community characteristics of sense of community and social cohesion. Both individualism and collectivism were associated with the commitment but not the duty dimension of feelings of obligation, and both value orientations, but particularly individualism, was linked to serious leisure. Serious leisure very closely aligned with the commitment aspect of obligation as well as sense of community and social cohesion, thus emerging as a possible pathway for nurturing sense of community in a culture of individualism. Correlation and hierarchical regression analyses link the commitment aspect of obligation to sense of community and social cohesion. Feelings of duty to volunteer, in contrast, were inversely related to sense of community. Thus, the nature of feelings of obligation related to volunteering as commitment or duty have significant implications for the collective outcomes of volunteering, particularly sense of community. Also notable are the strong theoretical and empirical relationships between the OVC scale and serious leisure, which suggest that the newly-developed commitment scale could be considered a measure of the agreeable obligation that accompanies serious leisure pursuits.

Using a feminist, autoethnographic methodology and in depth interviews with twenty-three participants, I sought to better understand the meaning of family memory keeping for women and their families through this research, paying particular attention to the ways that dominant gender ideologies shape family memory and the act of preserving family memory. This research also endeavoured to explore those instances wherein families lose that memory keeper due to memory loss, absence, or death. Interviews revealed that, despite its absence from the literature, women’s family memory keeping is a valuable form of gendered labour – and leisure – that makes significant individual, familial, and social contributions, while simultaneously reproducing dominant gender ideologies and gendered constructions of fatherhood, motherhood, and the family. Through an exploration of the loss of a mother’s memory due to illness, death, or absence, this study also demonstrated the loss of a mother’s memory is both deeply felt, and deeply gendered. However, this study illustrated participants challenging these dominant gender ideologies, as well, and using family memory keeping as a way to resist, critique, and cope. As such, this study speaks to the absence of women’s family memory keeping from the gendered work, leisure studies, social construction, and loss literature, contributing a better understanding of both the activity itself and the gendered ideologies that shape the activity, as well. Not only does this study speak to gaps in existing literature, but findings make fresh theoretical contributions to this literature through three new concepts: the notion of the good mother as the “remembering mother”, the concept of “compliance leisure”, and the re-envisioning of women’s unpaid labour as contributing to “the homing of the home”. And with these contributions to the literature, this research also provides valuable insight for professionals working to improve policy and services surrounding postpartum care, individual and family therapy, caregiving, extended care, and palliative care.

Persons 65 years or older are the fastest growing demographic in Canada (Government of Canada, 2011) and the need for 24-hour care and LTC support will continue to rise. An association is typically drawn between death and dying and the movement into LTC homes. Leisure can alternatively be important for promoting “living” and supporting wellness in residents. The notion of “living” in LTC shifts emphasis away from illness and death to placing value on wellness. This participatory action research (PAR) study aims to understand wellness from residents’ perspectives and the role leisure plays in their wellness. PAR stakeholders (family/care partners, staff, and residents) collaboratively discuss how to best attain, interpret, and disseminate resident perspectives on wellness and required supports. The PAR process highlights the necessity for academics and practitioners to involve residents in decisions about their care experience. Guiding questions include: (1) What does wellness mean to residents living in LTC? (2) What does a ‘well’ LTC home look like to residents? (3) What is the nature of the relationship between leisure and wellness from a resident perspective? (4) How can those involved in LTC support resident wellness? From the perspectives of residents living in LTC homes, findings inform a resident wellness model and provide insights into how wellness and “well” LTC homes can be better supported. Thus, filling a gap in the literature and shifting focus to living ‘well’ in LTC.

Thesis (M. Soc. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1984.

Csikszentmihalyi's (1975b) 'flow' theory has been extensively developed and utilised, providing the leading explanation for positive subjective experiences in the study of leisure. The prescriptive tenets along with the archetypal descriptive characteristics of the flow state have been well documented. What is less explicit, however, is what occurs within experience in the instances immediately prior to the onset of flow and those immediately following: in what the author has come to term as pre-flow and post-flow experience (Elkington, 2006 and 2007). This research approaches the dearth of knowledge concerning pre- and post-flow experience from the perspective of existential-phenomenological psychology with the aim of bringing clarity to the experiential, conceptual, and theoretical uncertainty surrounding what goes before and after a state of flow and with it a more complete and holistic understanding of flow experience. The research explores the intricacies of flow experiences of participants from one activity characteristic of each of Stebbins' (2007a) amateur, hobbyist, and career volunteer serious leisure categories, namely: amateur actors, hobbyist table tennis players, and volunteer sports coaches. Using narrative meaning as an interpretative tool to generate descriptions of the specific experiential situations and action sequences that comprise pre- and post-flow produced a single representative narrative of pre- and post-flow experience, and the first empirical insights into the phenomenology of such phases of experience. Examining flow in the context of serious leisure has revealed there to be significantly more to the act of experiencing flow than depicted in Csikszentmihalyi's (1975b) original framework, re-conceptualising flow as a focal state of mind in a broader experience-process model comprising distinct, intricate, and highly-personalised phases of pre-flow, flow-in-action, and post-flow experience. Combining flow and serious leisure has evoked the affinity of serious leisure activity for flow experience and the discovery that serious leisure and flow are not two disparate frameworks, but are structurally and experientially 'mutually reinforcing' of one another, revealing an explanatory framework of optimal leisure experience. The newly-emerged process view of flow was used to provide insights into the phenomenology of flow in serious leisure, adding to the explanatory capacity of Stebbins' serious leisure theoretical framework. Conflating flow and serious leisure in this way provides for significant and exciting opportunities for knowledge transfer between these two established leisure-related frameworks and signifies new vistas for future research in both fields.

published_or_final_version / Urban Studies / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Essay means attempt, and is a paper written based on self-experienced dilemmas, which the writer then returns to, reflect upon and discusses on the basis of literature and accepted theories. In this essay, I reflect upon my own professional role as a leisure-time pedagogue. The leisure-time pedagogue must provide activities that in different ways relate to the curriculum 2011. I have therefore a responsibility to influence the students' desire for knowledge. Focus of learning is different from the one in school, with an emphasis on informal learning. The dilemma is that I am unable to do any pedagogical work at the museum because of many conflicts. And that there is an ambivalence of what is expected of my work. By writing this essay, I want to explore and reflect upon leisure-time pedagogue´s meeting with a museum. I also reflect how to obtain an educational meeting, despite poorly developed awareness among teachers, other professionals, parents, and museums. There are many ways to implement work with the curriculum with a visit to the museum, and that would make the leisure-time pedagogue more of support for the whole visit. It would facilitate if the museums themselves hade a material adapted for leisure-time centre. With an emphasis on informal learning and for example aesthetic learning processes.

Leisure can provide a central context for the core adolescent issue of identity development. Given the importance of leisure in adolescents’ lives, it is imperative to understand the constraints to leisure and possible constraint negotiations. While extensive research exists on the leisure constraints and negotiations of adults, there is a notable paucity of similar research which addresses the potentially unique constraints and negotiations experienced by adolescents, with a particular lack of focus on adolescent girls from diverse races and ethnicities. As such, this research sought to explore the leisure constraints, negotiations and resistances of diverse adolescent girls. Guided by a feminist theoretical and methodological approach, the current research involved nine conversational interviews with immigrant adolescent girls, representing diverse races and ethnicities. It became clear that girls experienced numerous constraints, but also crucially negotiated constraints, and mobilized their leisure as resistance. As immigrant adolescent girls, participants each embarked on a personal journey, which spanned both the exterior geographies and interior landscapes of their two distinct cultures, back home and in Canada. Participants’ points of departure provided a mapping of some of the contours of their life back home, including structural constraints, gender constraints and gender resistances. As participants left home for Canada, they discovered a different world, fraught with its own leisure constraints. These Canadian leisure constraints encompassed all three major forms of constraints: structural, intrapersonal and interpersonal. Within this new world, participants also experienced racism and gender constraints. Significantly, participants discovered ways to navigate the Canadian constraints they encountered and resisted racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice. Finally, beyond an articulation of constraints and negotiations, girls’ leisure experiences revealed the intersections of influences and identities. Participants also unpacked continuing and emerging leisure identities and embraced leisure as a cultural connection.

Leisure can provide a central context for the core adolescent issue of identity development. Given the importance of leisure in adolescents’ lives, it is imperative to understand the constraints to leisure and possible constraint negotiations. While extensive research exists on the leisure constraints and negotiations of adults, there is a notable paucity of similar research which addresses the potentially unique constraints and negotiations experienced by adolescents, with a particular lack of focus on adolescent girls from diverse races and ethnicities. As such, this research sought to explore the leisure constraints, negotiations and resistances of diverse adolescent girls. Guided by a feminist theoretical and methodological approach, the current research involved nine conversational interviews with immigrant adolescent girls, representing diverse races and ethnicities. It became clear that girls experienced numerous constraints, but also crucially negotiated constraints, and mobilized their leisure as resistance. As immigrant adolescent girls, participants each embarked on a personal journey, which spanned both the exterior geographies and interior landscapes of their two distinct cultures, back home and in Canada. Participants’ points of departure provided a mapping of some of the contours of their life back home, including structural constraints, gender constraints and gender resistances. As participants left home for Canada, they discovered a different world, fraught with its own leisure constraints. These Canadian leisure constraints encompassed all three major forms of constraints: structural, intrapersonal and interpersonal. Within this new world, participants also experienced racism and gender constraints. Significantly, participants discovered ways to navigate the Canadian constraints they encountered and resisted racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice. Finally, beyond an articulation of constraints and negotiations, girls’ leisure experiences revealed the intersections of influences and identities. Participants also unpacked continuing and emerging leisure identities and embraced leisure as a cultural connection.

Tyrimo tikslas: Ištirti aktyvaus poilsio gamtoje sektoriaus situaciją Kauno regione. Tyrimo objektas: Aktyvaus poilsio gamtoje sektoriaus situacijos analizė Kauno regione. Tyrimo uždaviniai: 1. Išanalizuoti laisvalaikio ir aktyvaus poilsio sampratas. 2. Atskleisti aktyvaus poilsio gamtoje situaciją Europoje bei Lietuvoje ir pateikti plėtros perspektyvas Kauno regione. 3. Išanalizuoti aktyvaus poilsio gamtoje paslaugų teikėjų situaciją Kauno regione. Tyrimo metodai: mokslinės literatūros analizė, anketinė apklausa, aprašomoji statistika. Rezultatai ir išvados: Laisvalaikis - laisvas laikas nuo privalomų veiklų, kuris atspindi žmogaus vidinį pasaulį, jo vertybių sistemą, idealus, valią, ryžtą, motyvus. Aktyvų poilsį galima apibūdinti kaip savanorišką asmens dalyvavimą laisvalaikio veikloje, vykstančioje gamtoje, kurių metu yra aktyviai judama, gaunama dvasinė ir fizinė nauda, nes žmogus patiria malonumą ir kartu stiprina savo fizinį pasirengimą. Yra pastebimas aktyvaus poilsio gamtoje sektoriaus augimas. Europoje ir Lietuvoje aktyvaus poilsio gamtoje sektorius stipriai vystosi, vykdomi projektai, kad padėtų dar labiau suprasti šio sektoriaus svarbą ir kaip jį tinkamai plėtoti toliau. Kauno regiono strategijose yra sukurti tikslai ir uždaviniai, kurie skatina visų penkių veiklų aktyvaus poilsio gamtoje plėtrą. Šis tyrimas leido pamatyti bendrą aktyvaus poilsio gamtoje sektoriaus situaciją Kauno regione, nes prieš tai nebuvo atlikta panašių tyrimų... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / -.