The New Politics of Leisure and Pleasure

This book explores the new politics of leisure and pleasure in relation to a range of popular activities. Current generations in Western societies are essentially recipients of the changes that the Sixties fabled decade of sex, drugs and rock n' roll - left behind. In their leisure lives whether drinking, reading, surfing the net, taking drugs, going to a comedy gig, watching TV, taking a holiday, downloading music, supporting a football club, having a bet, having sex or simply roaming the countryside people seem to enjoy unprecedented freedoms. But what are these freedoms? How are they exercised? And to what extent have traditional controls been relinquished?

PETER BRAMHAM is Visiting Research Fellow in the Carnegie Faculty of Leeds Metropolitan University, UK. His publications include Understanding Leisure (co-authored), A Sociology of Leisure: A Reader (co-edited), Leisure and the Urban Process (co-edited) and Leisure Policies in Europe (co-edited). His most recent book is Sport, Leisure and Culture in the Postmodern City, edited with Stephen Wagg.
 
STEPHEN WAGG is Professor in the Carnegie Faculty of Leeds Metropolitan University, UK. He has written widely on the politics of comedy, as well the politics of sport and of childhood. His publications include Because I Tell a Joke or Two: Comedy, Politics and Social Difference (edited).

Introduction: Unforbidden Fruit: From Leisure to Pleasure; P.Bramham & S.Wagg
Choosing Leisure: Social Theory, Class and Generations; P.Bramham
Double Measures: The Moral Regulation of Alcohol Consumption, Past and Present; C.Critcher
Outdoor Recreation and the Environment; N.Ravenscroft & P.Gilchrist
Television, Deregulation and the Reshaping of Leisure; P.Drake & R.Haynes
Sex and the Citizens: Erotic Play and the New Leisure Culture; F.Attwood
Rituals of Intoxication: Young People, Drugs, Risk and Leisure; S.Blackman
States, Markets and New Media: the Contemporary Politics of Gambling; J.West & T.Austrin
Towards Web 3.0: Mashing Up Work and Leisure; A.Miah
Tourist Bodies, Transformation and Sensuality; A.Pritchard & N.Morgan
'They Can't Stop Us Laughing': Politics, Leisure and the Comedy Business; S.Wagg
Noughties Reading; N.Matthews
Sport and Lifestyle; J.Horne
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Music and Leisure in an Era of X Factor and Digital Pirates; B.Lashua
Doublethink: The Confused and Contradictory Politics of Television Censorship in Britain; J.Petley
Afterword: Closing Reflections on the New Politics of Leisure and Pleasure; P.Bramham & S.Wagg