Leisure and Participation: A Social and Cultural Issue

In the context of today´s inequalities it is important to consider leisure, as an individual option, and the participation that is produced within the social dynamics by this activity that can be understood as a social and cultural issue.

By this perspective it is important to respect the local social actors in the identification of their own problems, and their ability to develop innovative solutions for themselves.  An important issue that arises is how to respond to the commitment to participation in face of development processes aiming life quality improvements.

The major mean and purpose of development is to allow the expansion of individual liberties, so they can be able to achieve better live standards.    Within this process of expansion of liberties, the population can reclaim opportunities equality in the face of development in such social integration process where all can be more participative.  To achieve this development proposition, it is necessary to conceive quality of live within social sphere and its different relations, where leisure plays a fundamental role.

For Joffre Dumazedier, leisure highlights elements that drive the individual to fulfill their social wellbeing-ness, and to foster a more active participation in the achievement of individual, family and professional, cultural e communitarian orders.  Leisure enables individuals with conditions to develop themselves as they receive or increase elements that, recklessly, constitute them.  Reflecting about the dynamic of the society, leisure is more than a simple complement to work, it is a source of production for new sets of values.  It is necessary to conceive social and cultural valorization of leisure as both social circumstance and global cultural feature.