Full Description
This book brings together chapters that address questions of leisure, activism, and the animation of urban environments. The authors share research that explores the meaning and making of activist practices, events of dissent, and the arts in everyday life. Situated in a growing body of activist scholarship and social justice research, within the field of leisure studies, the contributions spotlight understandings and disruptions of public spaces in cities. These range from overtly political practices such as protest marches to recreational practices such as skateboarding and bicycling that remake cities through their contestations of space. Across the collection the chapters raise broader questions of civil society, whether it is research on youth activism, historical uses of public spaces by rightwing or racist groups, or interrogating the absence of leisure and closure of public spaces for people
experiencing homelessness. Some chapters explore events, such as festivals as sites of resistance and social change. In others, grassroots neighbourhood activism through arts is centralised, or mega-events are framed through protest campaigns against bids to host the Summer Olympic Games. A central thread running through the chapters is the question of whose voices count and whose remain unheard in events of dissent in the city.
The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Leisure Studies.
Contents
Introduction: leisure, activism, and the animation of the urban environment 1. A people's history of leisure studies: where the white nationalists are 2. The right to exist: homelessness and the paradox of leisure 3. Skateboarding, gentle activism, and the animation of public space: CITE - A Celebration of Skateboard Arts and Culture at The Bentway 4. The transgressive festival imagination and the idealisation of reversal 5. Event bidding and new media activism 6. Experiences of urban cycling: emotional geographies of people and place 7. Leisure activism and engaged ethnography: heterogeneous voices and the urban palimpsest 8. Young activists in political squats. Mixing engagement and leisure 9. The emerging civil society. Governing through leisure activism in Milan Afterword - pause and breathe: a point of arrival and departure
