Abstract Drawing on the serious leisure perspective, social world theory, and social network analysis this thesis utilizes an exploratory methodology to develop a structural view of a social world network of 49 social actors comprised of the grassroots associations and the allied organisations expressly concerned with amateur artists in a regional Australian city. Semistructured interviews were conducted with spokespeople in leadership and management roles with the associations and organisations. The purpose of the interviews was to develop an understanding of the key attributes of the grassroots associations and the function of the allied commercial, cultural, and educational organisations, and to discover the patterns of links between these two types of social actors. In addition, the interviews explored the types of social world participation among the associational memberships; and the role, rewards, and costs experienced by the spokespeople who were fulfilling coordinating duties in the grassroots associations. The research found that associations of amateur artists were active in the local community coordinating their memberships, activities, and assets to provide calendars of events for the participants in a regional social world of the creative arts and that, the allied organisations provided complementary goods and services. Further, it emerged that links of varying intensity connecting the associations and organisations coalesced into a network. This comprised a cluster of social actors connected by their concern with actors, dancers, and musicians; a cluster of social actors connected by their concern with craft practitioners, community cultural development workers, visual artists, and writers; and of social actors with bilateral links connecting the two clusters. Also mixed serious leisure emerged as a significant mode of participation among the sample of grassroots association spokespeople who were interviewed and this was important to the sustainability of their associations over time. There are three major outcomes from the research. First, structural concepts from social network analysis in combination with social world theory developed into definition of a community level serious leisure network; second, this definition proved empirically viable in the research context, and third, a model to depict the phenomenon of a community level serious leisure network has emerged from the exploratory process. The findings have both theoretical and empirical implications. Theoretically, they assist research into the structure of community level leisure provision. The findings also encourage investigation of mixed serious leisure. Empirically, the application of network knowledge to improve community leisure resources can improve the outcomes for the social actors involved and the community in which they are embedded.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/254033 |
| Creators | Lawrence Bendle |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Detected Language | English |
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