The Internet Is Not The Answer To The Problem Of Leisure Identities, But The Internet Is Interesting For Leisure Studies: Against Postructuralist Theory and For Empirical Leisure Research

As people’s leisure lives have become mediated through the global networks of the internet, leisure scholars such as Tony Blackshaw (2010) see a digital world of liquid leisure. Drawing on the work of Castells, Beck and Bauman, Blackshaw and others such as Rojek (2010) who have advocated the ‘post-structural’ turn in leisure studies welcome the dissolution of boundaries, the reduction of inequalities of power, and the individualization of leisure choices and leisure identities that the internet supposedly brings. In this paper, I provide a strong critique of the post-structural turn in leisure studies by showing that the theoretical foundations of such claims are weak, and the evidence base for such claims demonstrates only that some people in some countries have some freedoms to play at leisure identities. I will show that the internet in the work of post-structuralist leisure scholars has become a chimera that has little resemblance to the internet that actually exists. I will end by using some of my own research to demonstrate the limits of leisure on the internet and the structures that still shape human interactions, human leisure and human culture.

References

Blackshaw, T. (2010) Leisure. London: Routledge.

Rojek, C. (2010) The Labour of Leisure. London: Sage