A History of the Serious Leisure Perspective (SLP)
by Robert A. Stebbins
[n.b. References to chapters in this statement are to those in Elkington, S., & Stebbins, R.A. (2014). The serious leisure perspective: An introduction. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.]
“I’m serious about my archaeology,” exclaimed one amateur who, for several years, had been passionately pursuing his science. “It’s not like what most people do for leisure.” An amateur baseball player pointed out that: “what we are doing here is not church-league stuff. Many of us hope to be scouted by the pros and maybe get an offer.” And from an amateur thespian: “community theater is good quality drama; it is not your typical high-school play or anything anywhere near that. That’s because we take our acting seriously and work on perfecting our parts.”
From remarks like these the term serious leisure was born, born between 1973 and 1976 while Stebbins was collecting data for what was to become his “fifteen-year project” of research on amateurs and professionals. It is, in effect, a folk term. For, directly or indirectly, many of the amateur interviewees (autobiographers, in the case of the library study of classical musicians) decisively distanced themselves from the dominant conception of leisure as “simply a good time,” doing so by underscoring the seriousness with which they approached their avocational passion.
The Perspective: Its Early Days
It should be noted at the outset that parts of the SLP had been discussed before, or were being discussed as, I entered this area. De Grazia, (1962, pp. 332-336), Glasser (1970, pp. 190-192), Kaplan (1975, pp. 80, 183), and Kando (1980, p. 108) have all recognized the distinction between serious and casual leisure, even if they used different adjectives. In a far more simplistic way than suggested now by the SLP, the first three leaned toward serious leisure as the ideal way for people in post-industrial society to spend their free time.
The Fifteen-Year Project
If we must identify a day on which the fifteen-year project commenced, we would have to select one around December 1973 or January 1974. For it was at that time that Stebbins began the library research that eventually led to a paper on amateur musicians written for presentation at a conference the following spring. Having been involved in amateur music for most of his life (except for a two-year interlude as a professional), he was well aware that participants in that field regarded amateurism as something special. That day marked his first academic opportunity to study systematically amateur music and to record some of his thoughts that had been collecting over the years on the subject.
The plan was to write an ethnographic paper on amateur classical musicians, based on his experience as well as on over 200 biographic, autobiographic, and philosophic accounts that touched on these musicians' social lives. Three papers resulted (Stebbins, 1976; 1978a; 1978b). Yet, in retrospect, these were the least significant events of those early months.
What was most significant was Stebbins’ realization that neither sociology nor any other discipline had developed a substantial definition of amateur. (The closest anyone came to such a definition was Elizabeth Todd [1930], who wrote a largely historical article on amateurism.) He was thus compelled to meet the problem head-on; to develop his own definitions of amateur, the results of which appear in Chapter 4. Nonetheless, there were other consequences as well.
The lack of a social science definition of amateurs meant that no one had actually conceived of them in the light in which they are examined here: as people occupying a unique, albeit marginal, place within modern society. To be sure, amateur groups had been studied, but their status as amateurs in the community had never been the object of these investigations. That is, they were ignored as participants in leisure. Moreover, the groups studied have often consisted of adolescents or children, for whom the consequences of engaging in a serious pursuit differ greatly from those for adults.
It also became clear that amateurs are found throughout art, science, sport, and entertainment; that they may be distinguished by a variety of criteria from professionals who work in the same field and from dabblers who merely play at it; and that we should know much more about, seemingly, one of the most complicated and neglected facets of modern leisure. Stebbins went to work to design a crucial research project, one that would help answer many of the questions raised by his preliminary theoretic efforts with the musical autobiographies.
By spring of 1975 he had obtained the necessary funding to conduct an exploratory study of amateurism in the Dallas/Fort-Worth area. It was a one-year undertaking centering on amateurs in theater, archaeology, and baseball. From it he learned, among many other things, that it was a mistake to study amateurs to the exclusion of their professional counterparts. He also learned that, were these explorations to have lasting scientific value, he would need to study at least two examples in each of the aforementioned areas in which amateurs and professionals exist and are linked to one another. By the end of 1976 Stebbins had completed the first four of this octet of studies (the fifteen-year project). This included the library study of musicians.
Following his relocation to the University of Calgary, Stebbins launched a similar exploration of Canadian amateur as well as professional astronomers. That study was conducted from late 1977 through early 1978. Then in the first half of 1979 came the research on magicians and his first contact with amateurs and professionals in entertainment. In 1983 and 1984, Stebbins returned to the field to examine a second sport: Canadian football. Later still he studied stand-up comics, the second entertainment field. These final four studies, unlike the first four, rested largely on Canadian samples (some American professional comics and football players working in Canada were also interviewed).
Together these investigations, along with two conceptual statements, formed the basis for a set of exploratory generalizations reported in various books and articles and summarized in Stebbins (1992). This ended the fifteen-year project. I list below, in abbreviated form and by type of leisure participant, the publications spawned by the “Project.” They are fully referenced in the References section.
Theoretic Statements
■ The amateur; Two sociological definitions, Pacific Sociological Review Serious leisure: A conceptual statement, Pacific Sociological Review
CLASSICAL MUSICIANS
■ Music among friends: The social network of amateur classical musicians, International Review of Sociology (Series II)
■ Classical music amateurs: A definitional study, Humboldt Journal of Social Relations
■ Creating high culture: The American amateur classical musician, Journal of American Culture
ACTORS
■ Amateurs: On the margin between work and leisure Family, Work, and amateur acting. In Social research and cultural policy
ARCHEOLOGISTS
■ Amateurs: On the margin between work and leisure
■ Avocational science: The avocational routine in archaeology and astronomy, International Journal of Comparative Sociology
■ Science amators? Rewards and costs in amateur astronomy and archaeology, Journal of Leisure Research
BASEBALL PLAYERS
■ Amateurs: On the margin between work and leisure
ASTRONOMERS
■ Avocational science: The avocational routine in archaeology and astronomy, International Journal of Comparative Sociology
■ Science amators? Rewards and costs in amateur astronomy and archaeology, Journal of Leisure Research
■ Amateur and professional astronomers: A study of their inter-relationships, Urban Life
ENTERTAINMENT MAGICIANS
■ The magician: Career, culture, and social psychology in a variety art
FOOTBALL PLAYERS
■ Canadian football: The view from the helmet
STAND-UP COMICS
■ The laugh-makers: Stand-up comedy as art, business, and life-style
Early in the Project it became clear to Stebbins, as it already was to his research participants, that leisure can be conceived of in two great forms: serious and casual. Casual leisure is not, however, a folk term. Rather, Stebbins coined it. The participants nevertheless gave it both credence and validity. They pointed out that their serious leisure was extraordinary activity, unlike what most everyone else does in their free time. Other adjectives might have served as well as that of “casual,” but Stebbins settled on it as being as good a label as any for summarizing how they felt about the many forms of popular leisure of the day. In 1982 he formally wrote, for the first time, defining and linking both terms in the concept of serious leisure (Stebbins, 1982).
Furthermore, it became evident toward the end of the Texas research that hobbyists and volunteers were, in many ways, like amateurs. At the same time they were people pursuing different, albeit equally distinct, activities. Indeed the amateurs in the Project sometimes referred to themselves as hobbyists or volunteers. Moreover, Stebbins as accustomed to similar confusion in amateur classical music circles and in the related autobiographic literature that he had read. It was further evident that leisure of this complex sort – serious leisure – was being overlooked by social scientists. To be sure there were studies of amateurs which, as already noted, centered on matters other than their distinctive status in the domain of leisure. The same was true for research on volunteers, while hobbyists were virtually ignored altogether.
Exploring Serious Leisure
Why the particular mix of fields that constituted the Project? Stebbins’ justification was partly practical. For various reasons, both financial and academic, the studies had to be carried out close to home. He had therefore to draw on fields that were sufficiently represented locally. He also wanted to look at established amateur groups, so that initially at least the difficulties of becoming established could be avoided. These difficulties could always be scrutinized later. He further decided, where possible, to focus on collective amateurism, as opposed to individual amateurism (e.g., painting, writing, playing golf or tennis). This way the extensive effects of social interaction and group culture and structure could be examined. Again, the individual forms could always be dealt with at some other time. Also, because Stebbins preferred to collect his own data, he could only study the groups in tandem. Finally, it was necessary to get away from music, with which he had an insider's familiarity to study other fields that he knew initially only as an outsider. The amateur groups in the Project met these diverse considerations.
The methodology throughout the project has been qualitative, the exploratory research approach initially set out by Glaser and Strauss (1967) and more recently elaborated by Glaser (1978) and Stebbins himself (Stebbins, 2001c). In general, Stebbins first observed extensively the routine activities of each amateur-professional combination. As he became acquainted with their lifestyles, he then undertook lengthy, semi-structured, face-to-face interviews, in most instances with samples of 30 amateur and another 30 professional respondents. To the extent warranted by their lifestyles, social worlds, and core activities, he asked similar questions of the respondents in all fields. He would thereby be in a good position to generalize across them. Each field is unique, however, demanding some special observing, analyzing, interviewing, probing, and reporting on its distinctive aspects. The result was a significant measure of “substantive grounded theory” (Glaser & Strauss, 1967, pp. 33-35) for each field studied.
Based on this substantive grounded theory, Stebbins developed in somewhat more abstract terms, a “formal grounded theory” (as Glaser and Strauss put it) of serious leisure (see Stebbins, 2001a) and, later (Stebbins, 2007) one of the SLP as it links together the three forms. In constructing these formal theories he learned first-hand about the importance of concatenating research through exploration. The expression concatenated exploration refers at once to a longitudinal research process and the resulting set of open-ended studies that are linked together, as it were, in a chain leading, to cumulative, often formal, grounded theory (Stebbins, 2006). Studies near the beginning of the chain are wholly or predominantly exploratory in scope. Each study, or link, in the chain examines or, at times, re-examines a related group, activity, or social process or aspect of a broader category of groups, activities, and so on (for an explanation of the SLP as formal theory, see Stebbins, 2014).
Since the study of serious leisure has now taken off in many other parts of the Western world, this conceptual development holds for Western leisure life outside North America, where it was originally pioneered.
After the Project
Publication of Amateurs, professionals, and serious leisure in 1992 signaled the culmination of the Project. It also served as the first stock-taking of the field of serious leisure as it had developed to that time. And just as important that occasion also dramatically highlighted, at least for Stebbins, the need to explore, in similar open-ended fashion, the other two types of serious leisure. He started on the hobbies, though study of them got underway in unusual fashion. While the Project was being carried out, he was simultaneously leading, from time-to-time beginning in 1979, participants in a travel-study course that he taught on New Orleans to that city to experience a special kind of cultural tourism. Stebbins came to realize that those participants were what he would later describe as “liberal arts hobbyists” (Stebbins, 1994a). Discussions with them, combined with his knowledge of the culture of the “City that Care Forgot,” eventuated in publication of The Connoisseur’s New Orleans (Stebbins, 1995a). Still, this was not the first statement on hobbies guided by the serious leisure side of the Perspective.
For much earlier Snyder (1986) had examined elderly shuffleboard players, classifiable in the SLP as sports and games hobbyists. Olmsted (e.g., 1988; 1991; 1993) had already been conducting research from this conceptual angle on collectors of guns and certain other objects. About the same time Mittelstaedt (1990-91; 1995) published his work on Civil War re-enactments, valuable in part, for its examination of mixed hobbies (e.g., a participant who makes a period uniform [hobby subtype of making and tinkering] and then, dressed in it, fights a mock battle [hobby subtype of activity participation]). The hobbyist sport of curling was studied by Apostle (1992) and the game of contract bridge by Scott and Godbey (1992; 1994). Lambert (e.g., 1995; 1996) has looked extensively at genealogy, a liberal arts hobby. Yair (1990; 1992) did research on Israeli runners, some of whom, contrary to the SLP, he classified as amateurs. His primary interest revolved around levels of commitment to the hobby shown by different groups of runners. Somewhat later Hastings and colleagues (1995) and Hastings, Kurth, and Schloder (1996), in a comparative study of Americans and Canadians, applied the Perspective to the careers of masters swimmers.asting
About this time Stebbins (1996a) published The Barbershop Singer, an exploratory study of male and female singers in Calgary. Barbershop can be
classified as activity participation. Shortly thereafter Baldwin and Norris (1999) studied the American Kennel Club and the making and tinkering hobby of breeding purebred dogs. Some of these hobbyists also train or show their animals, sometimes doing both. And, during this period, Stebbins (1994) introduced the idea of the liberal arts hobby. More recently King (2001) has contributed to the literature with her study of quilting. And since then Stebbins (2005b) his written about the hobbyist mountain sports of kayaking, snowboarding, and mountain and ice climbing. All these studies and many recent ones (see Chap. 6), in addition to their many other contributions, provide rich descriptions of the complex core activities in which they are anchored. By 2008 two quantitative measures of serious leisure had been published, together vouching for the theoretic maturity of the Perspective (Gould et al, 2008; Tsaur & Liang, 2008)
Amateurs
Even during the years of the Project Stebbins was not alone in studying amateurs. Thus, Etheridge and Neapolitan (1985) examined a sample of craft artists in the United States. Their data showed that amateurs are more serious about craft work than dabblers, as measured by amount of training and propensity to read craft magazines. Furthermore, the dabblers saw this leisure as recreation, as diversion from their daily routine, whereas the amateurs saw it as something more profound, as an expression of a strong commitment to perfection and artistic creativity. Much later Yoder (1997) explored tournament bass fishing in the United States, leading to the C-PC-AP modification of the P-A-P system discussed in Chapter 2.
About the same time Juniu, Tedrick, and Boyd (1996) examined amateur and professional orchestral musicians in the United States. The
authors found that the amateurs did not see their performances as "pure leisure" nor did the professionals see them as "pure work." In fact, the views of the two differed little in this regard. Fine (1998) studied the social world of amateur mushroom collectors, whose counterparts are professional mycologists. This is a thoroughgoing ethnography of the amateur side of the field of mycology. It adds greatly to our understanding of amateur science as shaped by the earlier studies of archaeologists and astronomers. In what is quite possibly the first study of adult figure-skating as an amateur activity, McQuarrie and Jackson (1996) explored the constraints on a skater's progress through that person’s serious leisure career in this activity. The authors found that, as they pass through the five stages of that career, adult amateur ice-skaters encounter and often successfully negotiate a variety of constraints (see Chap. 5 for more recent work on amateurs).
Career Volunteers
Although, today, volunteering is the most studied of the three types of serious leisure, it was the last of them to be defined by Stebbins and integrated into the Perspective. His first statement on volunteering appeared in Stebbins (1982) and was subsequently elaborated in Stebbins (1996b). As for his empirical work on this type, he observed their central role in helping maintain the Calgary French community (Stebbins, 1994b), but did not actually attempt a direct study of volunteers until somewhat later (Stebbins, 1998). In the latter he described for the first time the role of key volunteers in sustaining organizations and communities. This kind of civil labor generates a deep sense of self-fulfillment in such people (see Chap. 1).
The banner year for the study of career volunteering, however, was 1997. Six publications appeared that year, several of them appearing in a special issue of World Leisure and Recreation (v.39, n. 3, 1997). These articles and others are summarized in Stebbins (2001a, pp. 117-119). Three years later a special issue bearing on the question of volunteering as leisure appeared in Loisir et Société/Society and Leisure (v. 23, n. 2, 2000). The contents of this issue and those of the book edited with Margaret Graham (Stebbins & Graham, 2004) that bear directly on career volunteering are reviewed in Stebbins (2007, Chap. 2). The object of the 2004 anthology was to assemble an international collection of studies on career volunteering. Research and theorizing on volunteering continues as a dynamic wing of the SLP (see Chap. 6).
Imported Concepts
The SLP is now, as already noted, a formal grounded theory. Discussions of such theory give the impression that it is created by way of inductive reasoning entirely, directly, and exclusively from data. Whereas it is possible to develop a formal grounded theory by this (dare we say purest) approach, the present approach has also drawn on several important imported concepts. They are concepts defined and elaborated outside the SLP, being brought into it to broaden its explanatory scope. We believe it will be evident below just how much these so-called foreign ideas have added to the Perspective.
Indeed the fifteen-year project began with several imported ideas, among them career, commitment, identity, and volunteer/volunteering. The aim of this section is to show how and where, over the course of the history of the Perspective, still other imported ideas have been brought in and what they have added to it by dint of their presence.
One of the more recent imports was introduced in Chapter 2, namely, the social world. Publication of Unruh’s (1979; 1980) crisp elaboration of this idea (it had been discussed in more nebulous terms by earlier thinkers) enabled Stebbins to flesh out considerably the nature of the fifth distinctive quality of serious leisure: unique ethos. In this regard he first drew on this idea, albeit rather superficially, in the report on the Project (Stebbins, 1992, p. 7). Social world then became a main concept for analyzing the barbershop singers (Stebbins, 1996a) and the nature challenge hobbies (Stebbins, 2005b) as well as in the framework established for examining the organizational basis of leisure motivation (Stebbins, 2002).
Another imported concept is that of lifestyle. Veal (1993) did a great deal to bring this concept into leisure studies. Stebbins’ (1997b) elaboration of it extended his thoughts into serious leisure, where it has served to anchor subsequent analyses of, for example, volunteers and the three mountain hobbies (Stebbins, 1998; 2005b). The concepts of discretionary time commitment and optimal leisure lifestyle sprang from this conceptual base (see Chaps. 4 and 10, respectively).
A third conceptual import is the idea of central life interest (Dubin, 1992). It was discussed in Chapter 2 as an element in the uncontrollability of serious leisure. It first appeared in the literature on the Perspective in Stebbins (1992, p. 3). To the extent that lifestyles form around complicated, absorbing, fulfilling activities, as they invariably do in the serious pursuits, these lifestyles can also be viewed as behavioral expressions of the participants' central life interests in those activities (Stebbins, 2001a, p. 20).
Social capital and civil labor, together, constitute a fourth imported concept, which has helped tie the SLP to the community and societal levels of analysis. It was said in Chapter 3 that, for the most part, civil labor is the contribution to community that amateurs, hobbyists, and career volunteers make when they pursue their serious leisure (Rojek, 2002, pp. 26-27). Furthermore, civil labor, however conceived of, generates social capital. Stebbins (2002, pp. 111-113) has also used this same line of reasoning as a partial explanation of the ways social organization motivates leisure participation.
Yet another imported idea is that of Deviance as leisure. It entered the SLP via two avenues: Stebbins (1997a) and Rojek (1997). Stebbins’ (1996c) textbook on deviance analyzed several kinds of deviance. In doing so he used a general leisure framework, without specifying which kinds are casual and which are serious. Chapter 14 of the present book views deviant leisure through the lens of the SLP.
These five imported concepts have come from sociology. From the psychology of leisure Stebbins imported the idea of flow (Csikszentmihalyi,1990), conceptualizing it as an integral part of the SLP (see Chap. 2). He first related this concept to serious leisure in Stebbins (1992, pp. 112, 127). Later he examined the experience of flow among barbershop singers (Stebbins, 1996a, pp. 67-68) and still later among kayakers, snowboarders, and mountain/ice climbers (Stebbins, 2005b, Chap. 5).
Psychologists have also looked at leisure and well-being (e.g., Haworth, 1997). The first statement linking well-being and serious leisure was published in Haworth’s collection (Stebbins, 1997c, chap. 8), It is presented, with additional thoughts on the matter, in the next chapter. Selfishness, which is was first described in general terms (Stebbins, 1981), also has psychological roots. Later Stebbins (1995b) incorporated the idea in the SLP, identifying it as one of the consequences of uncontrollability (Chap. 2).
Casual Leisure
Casual leisure, as already observed, got its start in the Perspective at the same time as serious leisure, but served only as a foil for the latter until Stebbins (1997a) presented a separate conceptual statement on it. Central to that statement was the proposition that casual leisure is essentially hedonic. This claim has parked a good deal of debate, for the hedonic characterization was taken by some critics to mean that casual leisure had no merit. Stebbins attempted to set the record straight in a subsequent article (Stebbins, 2001b), in which he noted that, for all its hedonism, casual leisure does certainly generate a number of benefits. These were described in Chapter 2, along with still other benefits noted by Kleiber (2000) and Hutchinson and Kleiber (2005).
Nevertheless, debate on the role of casual leisure raged most intensely in the field of leisure education. The ferment was fired by the claim (Stebbins, 1999) that leisure education revolves around serious leisure (project-based leisure had not yet been conceptualized), a stance that then became part of a draft position paper on leisure education developed by the Education Commission of the World Leisure & Recreation Association (known today as World Leisure). The draft argued that people of all ages should be informed of the differences separating serious and casual leisure, but after learning this, they should then be told about serious leisure, where it can be found, and what its benefits, costs, and rewards are. The SLP and leisure education are the subject of Chapter 14.
Casual leisure’s role as a foil to serious leisure will probably continue. When the general public thinks of leisure, it tends to have casual leisure in mind, suggesting that discussions with the public about serious leisure cannot escape comparing the two forms. In other words, casual leisure offers a recognizable backdrop, which facilitates understanding of the serious pursuits and, for that matter, of project-based leisure. One important message to emerge from the foregoing debate is that casual leisure, no matter how hedonic, is not trivial. Its benefits many of which, we are sure, remain to be discovered should be recognized and communicated, along with, of course, the benefits and rewards of the other two forms.
Project-Based Leisure
Being the newcomer that it is (first publication on it by Stebbins, 2005a), project-based leisure still has no significant history to report on. But it is in keeping with the present chapter to describe the circumstances that gave rise to the idea. The “discovery” of project-based leisure was pure serendipity, an anomaly perhaps in a field so rooted in exploratory research as the SLP is.
Serendipity is the quintessential form of informal experimentation, accidental discovery, and spontaneous invention (Stebbins, 2001c, pp. 3-4). It turned out to be a serendipitous evening for Stebbins, as he attended a surprise sixtieth birthday party for a close friend. Peggy's sixtieth birthday was three months off, when members of her immediate family decided to stage a surprise party to celebrate the occasion in grand style. A division of labor was struck, in which father would book a restaurant and invite the guests, while the son and one of the daughters would assemble a detailed slide show of Peggy's life, running from her birth to the present. With 25 guests and the need to invite them secretly, father was undertaking some project-based leisure of his own (best classified here as informal volunteering). Nonetheless, the project of his two children was even more complicated and time consuming.
To build their slide show (a project in entertainment theatre), they had to contact maternal relatives in distant parts of the country to obtain earlier photographs of Peggy and of important people and events in her life. This material was then assembled into a chronological account of her main work and leisure activities up to her sixtieth year. Some specialized background knowledge was required to create the slide show, for it was to be projected by computer. So it fell to Peggy's son to attend to this facet of the project, while her daughter saw to rounding up the photographs and developing the story line.
The show consisted of 180 slides presented in a 45-minute session following the dinner. Peggy, from whom the entire event had been successfully kept secret, was flabbergasted by it all. Enormously pleased with everything that had occurred that evening, she found it hard to fathom the amount of effort that her son and daughter had put into the slide project and how well it turned out.
The rewards experienced by the son and daughter included self-actualization (e.g., learned a great deal about extended family), self-expression (e.g., computer skills), and self-image among the 25 guests as producers of the “fantastic” slide show. The son and daughter experienced the reward of group accomplishment as well as, since their project also involved collaboration with others. Moreover, since both held full-time jobs, it is quite possible that their project further served as temporary re-creation.
As Stebbins sat through the various phases of the evening’s celebration, his mind wondered to his professional interests, notably, leisure. What kind of leisure was this? It was clearly not serious leisure, one reason being that there is no career in so short an undertaking. At the same time it was far more complex than typical casual leisure. In fact, some past skills and knowledge were brought into play (e.g., computer skills), while other aspects of the project required only routine phoning and mailing (of invitations). Before Stebbins left the party that evening, he had concluded that this was a project, and that, in leisure, projects like this one are sufficiently different from the casual and serious forms to warrant their own classificatory home.
In the development of the SLP, this serendipitous discovery was, obviously, a most important step. All leisure could no longer be classified according to whether it is serious or casual. This having been said, the challenge today, just as it was when serious leisure was first broached in the
1970s, is to get to work on a set of exploratory studies that further empirically anchor project-based leisure and, using the grounded data they will generate, to check the validity of the ideas contained in the conceptual statement of 2005. New concepts and propositions will surely emerge.
2007-2014
The concept of the serious leisure perspective was set out in 2007 (Stebbins, 2007), with the first version of Jenna Hartel’s SLP diagram of it appearing on the SLP website around the same time and in print in Stebbins (2009a). She launched the website itself in 2006.
With the core of the SLP having evolved into a substantial formal grounded theory by the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century (Stebbins, 2014), the time had come to apply it more intensely to new areas. Perhaps the most ambitious of these intellectual adventures was the proposal for a positive sociology (Stebbins, 2009a), which took its cue from its successful counterpart in psychology. That same year Stebbins (2009b) used the SLP to elucidate the complex role leisure plays in modern consumption. Nonetheless, advancing the SLP as a main motivational foundation for social entrepreneurship might be seen by some scholars as its most unorthodox extension (Durieux & Stebbins, 2010). Davidson and Stebbins (2011) moved in another direction by applying the Perspective to outdoor hobbies and amateur activities, where the common ground among participants is their awe of nature unmodified by man. In an attempt to determine the generalizability of the SLP, Stebbins (2013c), explored casual leisure and the serious pursuits in the Arab and Iranian Middle East and North Africa. There is considerable evidence that all aspects of the Perspective are pursued to a greater or lesser extent there. Further application has continued with publication of a study of adult reading and a guide on leisure-based planning for retirement (Stebbins, 2013a and 2013b, respectively).
In all this, theoretic work related to the SLP has not flagged. Stebbins (2012) tackled in a small book the thorny question of the definition of leisure, introducing in the process the umbrella concept of the “serious pursuit” (serious leisure and devotee work). With Elie Cohen-Gewerc (Cohen-Gewerc & Stebbins, 2013) he explored the interplay of individuality and serious leisure. They examined how individual distinctiveness can be achieved by way of this form of leisure. The sense of career, which has been viewed as a distinguishing quality of serious leisure since the first statement on the latter in 1982, is explored in the amateur, hobbyist, and volunteer activities and, in some instances, on into devotee work (Stebbins, in press, a). This book has its practical side, in that the question of “what to do with my life” is answered by examining the multiplicity of fulfillment careers available in the serious pursuits. Another theoretic thrust follows from the work on positive sociology, in this instance linking the SLP to positive psychology (Stebbins, in press, b). On the theoretic plane key discussions have appeared, notably those generated by Shen and Yarnal (2010) and Scott (2012) on the Recreation Specialization and on the casual leisure-serious leisure (CL-SL) Continuum (see also Stebbins, 2013d).
Extensive research in the area continues apace, especially on sport, aging and retirement, casual leisure and serious leisure (particularly on the hobbies) and library and information science. Still, every category in the Bibliography has grown to some extent in recent years (see authors in each at www.seriousleisure.net). The following categories were especially vibrant during 2007-2014. Jinmoo Heo, often with Youngkhill Lee and colleagues, contributed exceptionally to the two categories of Sport and Aging. In this period Anne Fenech devoted herself to the study of Casual Leisure in cases of Therapeutic Recreation (neurorehabilitation). Sam Elkington also added substantially to the general literature on Serious Leisure. In Library and Information Science both Jenna Hartel and Crystal Fulton standout for their extensive contributions. And in the Hobbies Lee Davidson has been a most active contributor. Turning to Tourism --- particularly event analysis --- Don Getz is conspicuous for his work based on the SLP. Last but not least, Kirsten Holmes has written several articles and chapters during this period on volunteering in heritage administration.
A key synthesis of the SLP is presently underway, namely, a modular introduction to it written for undergraduate and graduate students (Elkington
& Stebbins, 2014). There is even talk of a journal.
References
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Gould, J., Moore, D., McGuire, F., & Stebbins, R.A. (2008). Development of the serious leisure inventory and measure. Journal of Leisure Research, 40, 47-68.
Hastings, D.W., Kurth, S.B., & Schloder, M. (1996). Work routines in the serious leisure career of Canadian and U.S. masters swimmers. Avanté, 2, 73-92.
Hastings, D.W., Kurth, S.B., Schloder, M., & Cyr, Darrell (1995). Reasons for participating in a serious leisure: Comparison of Canadian and U.S. masters swimmers. International Review for Sociology of Sport 30, 101-119.
Haworth, J.T. (Ed.) (1997). Work, leisure and well-being. London: Routledge.
Hutchinson, S.L., & Kleiber, D.A. (2005). Gifts of the ordinary: Casual leisure’s contributions to health and well-being. World Leisure Journal, 47(3), 2-16.
Jeffries, V., Johnston, B.V., Nichols, L.T., Oliner, S.P., Tiryakian, E, & Weinstein, J. (2006). Altruism and social solidarity: Envisioning a field of specialization. American Sociologist, 37(3), 67-83.
Juniu, S., Tedrick, T., & Boyd, R. (1996). Leisure or work? Amateur and professional musicians' perception of rehearsal and performance. Journal of Leisure Research, 28, 44-56.
Kando, T.M. (1980). Leisure and popular culture in transition, 2nd ed. St. Louis, MO: C.V. Mosby.
Kaplan, M. (1975). Leisure: Theory and policy. New York, NY: Wiley.
King, F.L. (2001). Social dynamics of quilting, World Leisure Journal, 43(2), 26-29.
Kleiber, D.A. (2000). The neglect of relaxation. Journal of Leisure Research, 32, 82-86.
Lambert, R.D. (1995). Looking for genealogical motivation. Families, 34, 73-80.
Lambert, R.D. (1996). Doing family history. Families, 35, 11-25.
McQuarrie, F., & Jackson, E.L. (1996). Connections between negotiation of leisure constraints and serious leisure: An exploratory study of adult amateur ice skaters. Loisir et Société/Society and Leisure, 19, 459-483.
Mittelstaedt, R.D. (1990-91). The Civil War reenactment: A growing trend in creative leisure behavior. Leisure Information Quarterly, 17(4), 4-6.
Olmsted, A.D. (1988). Morally controversial leisure: The social world of the gun collector. Symbolic Interaction, 11, 277-287.
Olmsted, A.D. (1991). Collecting: Leisure investment or obsession? Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 6, 287-306.
Olmsted, A.D. (1993). Hobbies and serious leisure. World Leisure & Recreation, 35 (Spring), 27-32.
Rojek, C. (1997). Leisure theory: Retrospect and prospect. Loisir et Société/Society and Leisure, 20, 383-400.
Rojek, C. (2002). Civil labour, leisure and post work society. Société et Loisir/Society and Leisure, 25, 21-36.
Scott, D. (2012). Serious leisure and recreation specialization: An uneasy marriage. Leisure Sciences, 34, 366-371.
Scott, D., & Godbey, G.C. (1992). An analysis of adult play groups: Social versus serious participation in contract bridge. Leisure Sciences, 14, 47-67.
Scott, D., & Godbey, G.C. (1994). Recreation specialization in the social world of contract bridge. Journal of Leisure Research, 26, 275-295.
Shen, X. S., & Yarnal, C. (2010). Blowing open the serious leisure-casual leisure dichotomy: What's in there? Leisure Sciences, 32, 162-179.
Snyder, E.E. (1986). The social world of shuffleboard: Participation among senior citizens. Urban Life, 15, 237-53.
Stebbins, R.A. (1976). Music among friends: The social networks of amateur musicians. International Review of Sociology (Series II), 12 (April-August, 52-73.
Stebbins, R.A. (1978a). Classical music amateurs: A definitional study, Humboldt Journal of Social Relations, 5(2), 78-103.
Stebbins, R.A. (1978b). Creating high culture: The American amateur classicalmusician. Journal of American Culture, 1(3), 616-631.
Stebbins, R.A. (1979). Amateurs: On the margin between work and leisure. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Stebbins, R.A. (1981). The social psychology of selfishness. Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 18, 82-92.
Stebbins, R.A. (1982). Serious leisure: A conceptual statement. Pacific Sociological Review, 25, 251-72.
Stebbins, R.A. (1992). Amateurs, professionals, and serious leisure. Montreal, QC & Kingston, ON: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Stebbins, R.A. (1994a). The liberal arts hobbies: A neglected subtype of serious leisure. Loisir et Société/Society and Leisure, 16, 173-186.
Stebbins, R.A. (1994b). The Franco-Calgarians: French language, leisure, and linguistic lifestyle in an anglophone city. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.
Stebbins, R.A. (1995a). The connoisseur’s New Orleans. Calgary, AB: University of Calgary Press.
Stebbins, R.A. (1995b). Leisure and selfishness: An exploration. In G. S. Fain (Ed.), Reflections on the philosophy of leisure, Vol. II, Leisure and ethics (pp. 292-303). Reston, VA: American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance.
Stebbins, R.A. (1996a). The barbershop singer: Inside the social world of a musical hobby. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.
Stebbins, R.A. (1996b). Volunteering: A serious leisure perspective. Nonprofit and Voluntary Action Quarterly, 25, 211-224.
Stebbins, R.A. (1996c). Tolerable differences: Living with deviance, 2nd ed. Toronto, ON: McGraw-Hill Ryerson. Also available at www.seriousleisure.net/Digital Library.
Stebbins, R.A. (1997a). Casual leisure: A conceptual statement. Leisure Studies,16, 17-25.
Stebbins, R.A. (1997b). Lifestyle as a generic concept in ethnographic research. Quality& Quantity, 31, 347-360.
Stebbins, R.A. (1997c). Serious leisure and well-being. In J.T. Haworth (Ed.), Work, Leisure and Well-Being (pp. 117-130). London: Routledge.
Stebbins, R.A. (1998). The urban francophone volunteer: Searching for personal meaning and community growth in a linguistic minority. Vol. 3, No. 2 (New Scholars-New Visions in Canadian Studies quarterly monographs series). Seattle, WA: University of Washington, Canadian Studies Centre.
Stebbins, R.A. (1999). Educating for serious leisure: Leisure education in theory and Practice. World Leisure and Recreation, 41(4),
14-19.
Stebbins, R.A. (2001a). New directions in the theory and research of serious leisure, Mellen Studies in Sociology, vol. 28. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen.
Stebbins, R.A. (2001b). The costs and benefits of hedonism: Some consequences of taking casual leisure seriously. Leisure Studies, 20, 305-309.
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Stebbins, R. A. (2002). The organizational basis of leisure participation: A motivational exploration. State College, PA: Venture.
Stebbins, R.A.( 2005a). Project-based leisure: Theoretical neglect of a common use of free time. Leisure Studies, 24, 1-11.
Stebbins, R.A. (2005b). Challenging mountain nature: Risk, motive, and lifestyle in three hobbyist sports. Calgary, AB: Detselig.
Stebbins, R.A. (2006). Concatenated exploration: Aiding theoretic memory by planning well for the future. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35, 483-494.
Stebbins, R.A. (2007). Serious leisure: A perspective for our time. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
Stebbins, R.A. (2009a). Personal decisions in the public square: Beyond problem solving into a positive sociology. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
Stebbins, R.A. (2009b). Leisure and consumption: Common ground, separate worlds. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Stebbins, R.A. (2013a). The committed reader: Reading for utility, pleasure, and fulfillment in the twenty-first century. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.
Stebbins, R.A. (2013b). Planning your time in retirement: How to cultivate a leisure lifestyle to suit your needs and interests. Lanham, MD: Rowman
& Littlefield.
Stebbins, R.A. (2013c). Work and leisure in the Middle-East: The common ground of two separate worlds. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
Stebbins, R.A. (2013d). From dabbler to serious amateur musician and beyond: Clarifying a crucial step. International Journal of Community Music, 6, 141-152.
Stebbins, R.A. (2014). The Longitudinal Process of Grounded Theory Development: A Case Study in Leisure Research. In Sage Cases in Methodology. London: Sage (online publication).
Stebbins, R.A., & Graham. M. M. (Eds.) (2004). Volunteering as leisure/leisure as volunteering: An international assessment (pp. 13-30). Wallingford, Oxon, UK: CAB International.
Todd, E. (1930). Amateur. In R.A. Seligman (Ed.), Encyclopedia of the social sciences, vol. 2. New York: Macmillan.
Tsaur, S-H., & Liang, Y-W. (2008). Serious leisure and recreation specialization. Leisure Sciences, 30(4), 325-341.
Unruh, D.R. (1979). Characteristics and types of participation in social worlds. Symbolic Interaction, 2, 115-130.
Unruh, D.R. (1980). The nature of social worlds. Pacific Sociological Review, 23, 271-296.
Veal, A.J. (1993). The concept of lifestyle: A review. Leisure Studies, 12, 233-252.
Weber, M. (1947). The theory of social and economic organization, trans. by Talcott Parsons. New York: The Free Press.
Yair, G. (1990). The commitment to long-distance running and level of activities. Journal of Leisure Research, 22, 213-227.
Yair. G. (1992). What keeps them running? The “circle of commitment” of long distance runners. Leisure Studies, 11, 257-270.
Yoder, D.G. (1997). A model for commodity intensive serious leisure. Journal of Leisure Research, 29, 407-429.
[n.b. References to chapters in this statement are to those in Elkington, S., & Stebbins, R.A. (2014). The serious leisure perspective: An introduction. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.]
“I’m serious about my archaeology,” exclaimed one amateur who, for several years, had been passionately pursuing his science. “It’s not like what most people do for leisure.” An amateur baseball player pointed out that: “what we are doing here is not church-league stuff. Many of us hope to be scouted by the pros and maybe get an offer.” And from an amateur thespian: “community theater is good quality drama; it is not your typical high-school play or anything anywhere near that. That’s because we take our acting seriously and work on perfecting our parts.”
From remarks like these the term serious leisure was born, born between 1973 and 1976 while Stebbins was collecting data for what was to become his “fifteen-year project” of research on amateurs and professionals. It is, in effect, a folk term. For, directly or indirectly, many of the amateur interviewees (autobiographers, in the case of the library study of classical musicians) decisively distanced themselves from the dominant conception of leisure as “simply a good time,” doing so by underscoring the seriousness with which they approached their avocational passion.
The Perspective: Its Early Days
It should be noted at the outset that parts of the SLP had been discussed before, or were being discussed as, I entered this area. De Grazia, (1962, pp. 332-336), Glasser (1970, pp. 190-192), Kaplan (1975, pp. 80, 183), and Kando (1980, p. 108) have all recognized the distinction between serious and casual leisure, even if they used different adjectives. In a far more simplistic way than suggested now by the SLP, the first three leaned toward serious leisure as the ideal way for people in post-industrial society to spend their free time.
The Fifteen-Year Project
If we must identify a day on which the fifteen-year project commenced, we would have to select one around December 1973 or January 1974. For it was at that time that Stebbins began the library research that eventually led to a paper on amateur musicians written for presentation at a conference the following spring. Having been involved in amateur music for most of his life (except for a two-year interlude as a professional), he was well aware that participants in that field regarded amateurism as something special. That day marked his first academic opportunity to study systematically amateur music and to record some of his thoughts that had been collecting over the years on the subject.
The plan was to write an ethnographic paper on amateur classical musicians, based on his experience as well as on over 200 biographic, autobiographic, and philosophic accounts that touched on these musicians' social lives. Three papers resulted (Stebbins, 1976; 1978a; 1978b). Yet, in retrospect, these were the least significant events of those early months.
What was most significant was Stebbins’ realization that neither sociology nor any other discipline had developed a substantial definition of amateur. (The closest anyone came to such a definition was Elizabeth Todd [1930], who wrote a largely historical article on amateurism.) He was thus compelled to meet the problem head-on; to develop his own definitions of amateur, the results of which appear in Chapter 4. Nonetheless, there were other consequences as well.
The lack of a social science definition of amateurs meant that no one had actually conceived of them in the light in which they are examined here: as people occupying a unique, albeit marginal, place within modern society. To be sure, amateur groups had been studied, but their status as amateurs in the community had never been the object of these investigations. That is, they were ignored as participants in leisure. Moreover, the groups studied have often consisted of adolescents or children, for whom the consequences of engaging in a serious pursuit differ greatly from those for adults.
It also became clear that amateurs are found throughout art, science, sport, and entertainment; that they may be distinguished by a variety of criteria from professionals who work in the same field and from dabblers who merely play at it; and that we should know much more about, seemingly, one of the most complicated and neglected facets of modern leisure. Stebbins went to work to design a crucial research project, one that would help answer many of the questions raised by his preliminary theoretic efforts with the musical autobiographies.
By spring of 1975 he had obtained the necessary funding to conduct an exploratory study of amateurism in the Dallas/Fort-Worth area. It was a one-year undertaking centering on amateurs in theater, archaeology, and baseball. From it he learned, among many other things, that it was a mistake to study amateurs to the exclusion of their professional counterparts. He also learned that, were these explorations to have lasting scientific value, he would need to study at least two examples in each of the aforementioned areas in which amateurs and professionals exist and are linked to one another. By the end of 1976 Stebbins had completed the first four of this octet of studies (the fifteen-year project). This included the library study of musicians.
Following his relocation to the University of Calgary, Stebbins launched a similar exploration of Canadian amateur as well as professional astronomers. That study was conducted from late 1977 through early 1978. Then in the first half of 1979 came the research on magicians and his first contact with amateurs and professionals in entertainment. In 1983 and 1984, Stebbins returned to the field to examine a second sport: Canadian football. Later still he studied stand-up comics, the second entertainment field. These final four studies, unlike the first four, rested largely on Canadian samples (some American professional comics and football players working in Canada were also interviewed).
Together these investigations, along with two conceptual statements, formed the basis for a set of exploratory generalizations reported in various books and articles and summarized in Stebbins (1992). This ended the fifteen-year project. I list below, in abbreviated form and by type of leisure participant, the publications spawned by the “Project.” They are fully referenced in the References section.
Theoretic Statements
■ The amateur; Two sociological definitions, Pacific Sociological Review Serious leisure: A conceptual statement, Pacific Sociological Review
CLASSICAL MUSICIANS
■ Music among friends: The social network of amateur classical musicians, International Review of Sociology (Series II)
■ Classical music amateurs: A definitional study, Humboldt Journal of Social Relations
■ Creating high culture: The American amateur classical musician, Journal of American Culture
ACTORS
■ Amateurs: On the margin between work and leisure Family, Work, and amateur acting. In Social research and cultural policy
ARCHEOLOGISTS
■ Amateurs: On the margin between work and leisure
■ Avocational science: The avocational routine in archaeology and astronomy, International Journal of Comparative Sociology
■ Science amators? Rewards and costs in amateur astronomy and archaeology, Journal of Leisure Research
BASEBALL PLAYERS
■ Amateurs: On the margin between work and leisure
ASTRONOMERS
■ Avocational science: The avocational routine in archaeology and astronomy, International Journal of Comparative Sociology
■ Science amators? Rewards and costs in amateur astronomy and archaeology, Journal of Leisure Research
■ Amateur and professional astronomers: A study of their inter-relationships, Urban Life
ENTERTAINMENT MAGICIANS
■ The magician: Career, culture, and social psychology in a variety art
FOOTBALL PLAYERS
■ Canadian football: The view from the helmet
STAND-UP COMICS
■ The laugh-makers: Stand-up comedy as art, business, and life-style
Early in the Project it became clear to Stebbins, as it already was to his research participants, that leisure can be conceived of in two great forms: serious and casual. Casual leisure is not, however, a folk term. Rather, Stebbins coined it. The participants nevertheless gave it both credence and validity. They pointed out that their serious leisure was extraordinary activity, unlike what most everyone else does in their free time. Other adjectives might have served as well as that of “casual,” but Stebbins settled on it as being as good a label as any for summarizing how they felt about the many forms of popular leisure of the day. In 1982 he formally wrote, for the first time, defining and linking both terms in the concept of serious leisure (Stebbins, 1982).
Furthermore, it became evident toward the end of the Texas research that hobbyists and volunteers were, in many ways, like amateurs. At the same time they were people pursuing different, albeit equally distinct, activities. Indeed the amateurs in the Project sometimes referred to themselves as hobbyists or volunteers. Moreover, Stebbins as accustomed to similar confusion in amateur classical music circles and in the related autobiographic literature that he had read. It was further evident that leisure of this complex sort – serious leisure – was being overlooked by social scientists. To be sure there were studies of amateurs which, as already noted, centered on matters other than their distinctive status in the domain of leisure. The same was true for research on volunteers, while hobbyists were virtually ignored altogether.
Exploring Serious Leisure
Why the particular mix of fields that constituted the Project? Stebbins’ justification was partly practical. For various reasons, both financial and academic, the studies had to be carried out close to home. He had therefore to draw on fields that were sufficiently represented locally. He also wanted to look at established amateur groups, so that initially at least the difficulties of becoming established could be avoided. These difficulties could always be scrutinized later. He further decided, where possible, to focus on collective amateurism, as opposed to individual amateurism (e.g., painting, writing, playing golf or tennis). This way the extensive effects of social interaction and group culture and structure could be examined. Again, the individual forms could always be dealt with at some other time. Also, because Stebbins preferred to collect his own data, he could only study the groups in tandem. Finally, it was necessary to get away from music, with which he had an insider's familiarity to study other fields that he knew initially only as an outsider. The amateur groups in the Project met these diverse considerations.
The methodology throughout the project has been qualitative, the exploratory research approach initially set out by Glaser and Strauss (1967) and more recently elaborated by Glaser (1978) and Stebbins himself (Stebbins, 2001c). In general, Stebbins first observed extensively the routine activities of each amateur-professional combination. As he became acquainted with their lifestyles, he then undertook lengthy, semi-structured, face-to-face interviews, in most instances with samples of 30 amateur and another 30 professional respondents. To the extent warranted by their lifestyles, social worlds, and core activities, he asked similar questions of the respondents in all fields. He would thereby be in a good position to generalize across them. Each field is unique, however, demanding some special observing, analyzing, interviewing, probing, and reporting on its distinctive aspects. The result was a significant measure of “substantive grounded theory” (Glaser & Strauss, 1967, pp. 33-35) for each field studied.
Based on this substantive grounded theory, Stebbins developed in somewhat more abstract terms, a “formal grounded theory” (as Glaser and Strauss put it) of serious leisure (see Stebbins, 2001a) and, later (Stebbins, 2007) one of the SLP as it links together the three forms. In constructing these formal theories he learned first-hand about the importance of concatenating research through exploration. The expression concatenated exploration refers at once to a longitudinal research process and the resulting set of open-ended studies that are linked together, as it were, in a chain leading, to cumulative, often formal, grounded theory (Stebbins, 2006). Studies near the beginning of the chain are wholly or predominantly exploratory in scope. Each study, or link, in the chain examines or, at times, re-examines a related group, activity, or social process or aspect of a broader category of groups, activities, and so on (for an explanation of the SLP as formal theory, see Stebbins, 2014).
Since the study of serious leisure has now taken off in many other parts of the Western world, this conceptual development holds for Western leisure life outside North America, where it was originally pioneered.
After the Project
Publication of Amateurs, professionals, and serious leisure in 1992 signaled the culmination of the Project. It also served as the first stock-taking of the field of serious leisure as it had developed to that time. And just as important that occasion also dramatically highlighted, at least for Stebbins, the need to explore, in similar open-ended fashion, the other two types of serious leisure. He started on the hobbies, though study of them got underway in unusual fashion. While the Project was being carried out, he was simultaneously leading, from time-to-time beginning in 1979, participants in a travel-study course that he taught on New Orleans to that city to experience a special kind of cultural tourism. Stebbins came to realize that those participants were what he would later describe as “liberal arts hobbyists” (Stebbins, 1994a). Discussions with them, combined with his knowledge of the culture of the “City that Care Forgot,” eventuated in publication of The Connoisseur’s New Orleans (Stebbins, 1995a). Still, this was not the first statement on hobbies guided by the serious leisure side of the Perspective.
For much earlier Snyder (1986) had examined elderly shuffleboard players, classifiable in the SLP as sports and games hobbyists. Olmsted (e.g., 1988; 1991; 1993) had already been conducting research from this conceptual angle on collectors of guns and certain other objects. About the same time Mittelstaedt (1990-91; 1995) published his work on Civil War re-enactments, valuable in part, for its examination of mixed hobbies (e.g., a participant who makes a period uniform [hobby subtype of making and tinkering] and then, dressed in it, fights a mock battle [hobby subtype of activity participation]). The hobbyist sport of curling was studied by Apostle (1992) and the game of contract bridge by Scott and Godbey (1992; 1994). Lambert (e.g., 1995; 1996) has looked extensively at genealogy, a liberal arts hobby. Yair (1990; 1992) did research on Israeli runners, some of whom, contrary to the SLP, he classified as amateurs. His primary interest revolved around levels of commitment to the hobby shown by different groups of runners. Somewhat later Hastings and colleagues (1995) and Hastings, Kurth, and Schloder (1996), in a comparative study of Americans and Canadians, applied the Perspective to the careers of masters swimmers.asting
About this time Stebbins (1996a) published The Barbershop Singer, an exploratory study of male and female singers in Calgary. Barbershop can be
classified as activity participation. Shortly thereafter Baldwin and Norris (1999) studied the American Kennel Club and the making and tinkering hobby of breeding purebred dogs. Some of these hobbyists also train or show their animals, sometimes doing both. And, during this period, Stebbins (1994) introduced the idea of the liberal arts hobby. More recently King (2001) has contributed to the literature with her study of quilting. And since then Stebbins (2005b) his written about the hobbyist mountain sports of kayaking, snowboarding, and mountain and ice climbing. All these studies and many recent ones (see Chap. 6), in addition to their many other contributions, provide rich descriptions of the complex core activities in which they are anchored. By 2008 two quantitative measures of serious leisure had been published, together vouching for the theoretic maturity of the Perspective (Gould et al, 2008; Tsaur & Liang, 2008)
Amateurs
Even during the years of the Project Stebbins was not alone in studying amateurs. Thus, Etheridge and Neapolitan (1985) examined a sample of craft artists in the United States. Their data showed that amateurs are more serious about craft work than dabblers, as measured by amount of training and propensity to read craft magazines. Furthermore, the dabblers saw this leisure as recreation, as diversion from their daily routine, whereas the amateurs saw it as something more profound, as an expression of a strong commitment to perfection and artistic creativity. Much later Yoder (1997) explored tournament bass fishing in the United States, leading to the C-PC-AP modification of the P-A-P system discussed in Chapter 2.
About the same time Juniu, Tedrick, and Boyd (1996) examined amateur and professional orchestral musicians in the United States. The
authors found that the amateurs did not see their performances as "pure leisure" nor did the professionals see them as "pure work." In fact, the views of the two differed little in this regard. Fine (1998) studied the social world of amateur mushroom collectors, whose counterparts are professional mycologists. This is a thoroughgoing ethnography of the amateur side of the field of mycology. It adds greatly to our understanding of amateur science as shaped by the earlier studies of archaeologists and astronomers. In what is quite possibly the first study of adult figure-skating as an amateur activity, McQuarrie and Jackson (1996) explored the constraints on a skater's progress through that person’s serious leisure career in this activity. The authors found that, as they pass through the five stages of that career, adult amateur ice-skaters encounter and often successfully negotiate a variety of constraints (see Chap. 5 for more recent work on amateurs).
Career Volunteers
Although, today, volunteering is the most studied of the three types of serious leisure, it was the last of them to be defined by Stebbins and integrated into the Perspective. His first statement on volunteering appeared in Stebbins (1982) and was subsequently elaborated in Stebbins (1996b). As for his empirical work on this type, he observed their central role in helping maintain the Calgary French community (Stebbins, 1994b), but did not actually attempt a direct study of volunteers until somewhat later (Stebbins, 1998). In the latter he described for the first time the role of key volunteers in sustaining organizations and communities. This kind of civil labor generates a deep sense of self-fulfillment in such people (see Chap. 1).
The banner year for the study of career volunteering, however, was 1997. Six publications appeared that year, several of them appearing in a special issue of World Leisure and Recreation (v.39, n. 3, 1997). These articles and others are summarized in Stebbins (2001a, pp. 117-119). Three years later a special issue bearing on the question of volunteering as leisure appeared in Loisir et Société/Society and Leisure (v. 23, n. 2, 2000). The contents of this issue and those of the book edited with Margaret Graham (Stebbins & Graham, 2004) that bear directly on career volunteering are reviewed in Stebbins (2007, Chap. 2). The object of the 2004 anthology was to assemble an international collection of studies on career volunteering. Research and theorizing on volunteering continues as a dynamic wing of the SLP (see Chap. 6).
Imported Concepts
The SLP is now, as already noted, a formal grounded theory. Discussions of such theory give the impression that it is created by way of inductive reasoning entirely, directly, and exclusively from data. Whereas it is possible to develop a formal grounded theory by this (dare we say purest) approach, the present approach has also drawn on several important imported concepts. They are concepts defined and elaborated outside the SLP, being brought into it to broaden its explanatory scope. We believe it will be evident below just how much these so-called foreign ideas have added to the Perspective.
Indeed the fifteen-year project began with several imported ideas, among them career, commitment, identity, and volunteer/volunteering. The aim of this section is to show how and where, over the course of the history of the Perspective, still other imported ideas have been brought in and what they have added to it by dint of their presence.
One of the more recent imports was introduced in Chapter 2, namely, the social world. Publication of Unruh’s (1979; 1980) crisp elaboration of this idea (it had been discussed in more nebulous terms by earlier thinkers) enabled Stebbins to flesh out considerably the nature of the fifth distinctive quality of serious leisure: unique ethos. In this regard he first drew on this idea, albeit rather superficially, in the report on the Project (Stebbins, 1992, p. 7). Social world then became a main concept for analyzing the barbershop singers (Stebbins, 1996a) and the nature challenge hobbies (Stebbins, 2005b) as well as in the framework established for examining the organizational basis of leisure motivation (Stebbins, 2002).
Another imported concept is that of lifestyle. Veal (1993) did a great deal to bring this concept into leisure studies. Stebbins’ (1997b) elaboration of it extended his thoughts into serious leisure, where it has served to anchor subsequent analyses of, for example, volunteers and the three mountain hobbies (Stebbins, 1998; 2005b). The concepts of discretionary time commitment and optimal leisure lifestyle sprang from this conceptual base (see Chaps. 4 and 10, respectively).
A third conceptual import is the idea of central life interest (Dubin, 1992). It was discussed in Chapter 2 as an element in the uncontrollability of serious leisure. It first appeared in the literature on the Perspective in Stebbins (1992, p. 3). To the extent that lifestyles form around complicated, absorbing, fulfilling activities, as they invariably do in the serious pursuits, these lifestyles can also be viewed as behavioral expressions of the participants' central life interests in those activities (Stebbins, 2001a, p. 20).
Social capital and civil labor, together, constitute a fourth imported concept, which has helped tie the SLP to the community and societal levels of analysis. It was said in Chapter 3 that, for the most part, civil labor is the contribution to community that amateurs, hobbyists, and career volunteers make when they pursue their serious leisure (Rojek, 2002, pp. 26-27). Furthermore, civil labor, however conceived of, generates social capital. Stebbins (2002, pp. 111-113) has also used this same line of reasoning as a partial explanation of the ways social organization motivates leisure participation.
Yet another imported idea is that of Deviance as leisure. It entered the SLP via two avenues: Stebbins (1997a) and Rojek (1997). Stebbins’ (1996c) textbook on deviance analyzed several kinds of deviance. In doing so he used a general leisure framework, without specifying which kinds are casual and which are serious. Chapter 14 of the present book views deviant leisure through the lens of the SLP.
These five imported concepts have come from sociology. From the psychology of leisure Stebbins imported the idea of flow (Csikszentmihalyi,1990), conceptualizing it as an integral part of the SLP (see Chap. 2). He first related this concept to serious leisure in Stebbins (1992, pp. 112, 127). Later he examined the experience of flow among barbershop singers (Stebbins, 1996a, pp. 67-68) and still later among kayakers, snowboarders, and mountain/ice climbers (Stebbins, 2005b, Chap. 5).
Psychologists have also looked at leisure and well-being (e.g., Haworth, 1997). The first statement linking well-being and serious leisure was published in Haworth’s collection (Stebbins, 1997c, chap. 8), It is presented, with additional thoughts on the matter, in the next chapter. Selfishness, which is was first described in general terms (Stebbins, 1981), also has psychological roots. Later Stebbins (1995b) incorporated the idea in the SLP, identifying it as one of the consequences of uncontrollability (Chap. 2).
Casual Leisure
Casual leisure, as already observed, got its start in the Perspective at the same time as serious leisure, but served only as a foil for the latter until Stebbins (1997a) presented a separate conceptual statement on it. Central to that statement was the proposition that casual leisure is essentially hedonic. This claim has parked a good deal of debate, for the hedonic characterization was taken by some critics to mean that casual leisure had no merit. Stebbins attempted to set the record straight in a subsequent article (Stebbins, 2001b), in which he noted that, for all its hedonism, casual leisure does certainly generate a number of benefits. These were described in Chapter 2, along with still other benefits noted by Kleiber (2000) and Hutchinson and Kleiber (2005).
Nevertheless, debate on the role of casual leisure raged most intensely in the field of leisure education. The ferment was fired by the claim (Stebbins, 1999) that leisure education revolves around serious leisure (project-based leisure had not yet been conceptualized), a stance that then became part of a draft position paper on leisure education developed by the Education Commission of the World Leisure & Recreation Association (known today as World Leisure). The draft argued that people of all ages should be informed of the differences separating serious and casual leisure, but after learning this, they should then be told about serious leisure, where it can be found, and what its benefits, costs, and rewards are. The SLP and leisure education are the subject of Chapter 14.
Casual leisure’s role as a foil to serious leisure will probably continue. When the general public thinks of leisure, it tends to have casual leisure in mind, suggesting that discussions with the public about serious leisure cannot escape comparing the two forms. In other words, casual leisure offers a recognizable backdrop, which facilitates understanding of the serious pursuits and, for that matter, of project-based leisure. One important message to emerge from the foregoing debate is that casual leisure, no matter how hedonic, is not trivial. Its benefits many of which, we are sure, remain to be discovered should be recognized and communicated, along with, of course, the benefits and rewards of the other two forms.
Project-Based Leisure
Being the newcomer that it is (first publication on it by Stebbins, 2005a), project-based leisure still has no significant history to report on. But it is in keeping with the present chapter to describe the circumstances that gave rise to the idea. The “discovery” of project-based leisure was pure serendipity, an anomaly perhaps in a field so rooted in exploratory research as the SLP is.
Serendipity is the quintessential form of informal experimentation, accidental discovery, and spontaneous invention (Stebbins, 2001c, pp. 3-4). It turned out to be a serendipitous evening for Stebbins, as he attended a surprise sixtieth birthday party for a close friend. Peggy's sixtieth birthday was three months off, when members of her immediate family decided to stage a surprise party to celebrate the occasion in grand style. A division of labor was struck, in which father would book a restaurant and invite the guests, while the son and one of the daughters would assemble a detailed slide show of Peggy's life, running from her birth to the present. With 25 guests and the need to invite them secretly, father was undertaking some project-based leisure of his own (best classified here as informal volunteering). Nonetheless, the project of his two children was even more complicated and time consuming.
To build their slide show (a project in entertainment theatre), they had to contact maternal relatives in distant parts of the country to obtain earlier photographs of Peggy and of important people and events in her life. This material was then assembled into a chronological account of her main work and leisure activities up to her sixtieth year. Some specialized background knowledge was required to create the slide show, for it was to be projected by computer. So it fell to Peggy's son to attend to this facet of the project, while her daughter saw to rounding up the photographs and developing the story line.
The show consisted of 180 slides presented in a 45-minute session following the dinner. Peggy, from whom the entire event had been successfully kept secret, was flabbergasted by it all. Enormously pleased with everything that had occurred that evening, she found it hard to fathom the amount of effort that her son and daughter had put into the slide project and how well it turned out.
The rewards experienced by the son and daughter included self-actualization (e.g., learned a great deal about extended family), self-expression (e.g., computer skills), and self-image among the 25 guests as producers of the “fantastic” slide show. The son and daughter experienced the reward of group accomplishment as well as, since their project also involved collaboration with others. Moreover, since both held full-time jobs, it is quite possible that their project further served as temporary re-creation.
As Stebbins sat through the various phases of the evening’s celebration, his mind wondered to his professional interests, notably, leisure. What kind of leisure was this? It was clearly not serious leisure, one reason being that there is no career in so short an undertaking. At the same time it was far more complex than typical casual leisure. In fact, some past skills and knowledge were brought into play (e.g., computer skills), while other aspects of the project required only routine phoning and mailing (of invitations). Before Stebbins left the party that evening, he had concluded that this was a project, and that, in leisure, projects like this one are sufficiently different from the casual and serious forms to warrant their own classificatory home.
In the development of the SLP, this serendipitous discovery was, obviously, a most important step. All leisure could no longer be classified according to whether it is serious or casual. This having been said, the challenge today, just as it was when serious leisure was first broached in the
1970s, is to get to work on a set of exploratory studies that further empirically anchor project-based leisure and, using the grounded data they will generate, to check the validity of the ideas contained in the conceptual statement of 2005. New concepts and propositions will surely emerge.
2007-2014
The concept of the serious leisure perspective was set out in 2007 (Stebbins, 2007), with the first version of Jenna Hartel’s SLP diagram of it appearing on the SLP website around the same time and in print in Stebbins (2009a). She launched the website itself in 2006.
With the core of the SLP having evolved into a substantial formal grounded theory by the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century (Stebbins, 2014), the time had come to apply it more intensely to new areas. Perhaps the most ambitious of these intellectual adventures was the proposal for a positive sociology (Stebbins, 2009a), which took its cue from its successful counterpart in psychology. That same year Stebbins (2009b) used the SLP to elucidate the complex role leisure plays in modern consumption. Nonetheless, advancing the SLP as a main motivational foundation for social entrepreneurship might be seen by some scholars as its most unorthodox extension (Durieux & Stebbins, 2010). Davidson and Stebbins (2011) moved in another direction by applying the Perspective to outdoor hobbies and amateur activities, where the common ground among participants is their awe of nature unmodified by man. In an attempt to determine the generalizability of the SLP, Stebbins (2013c), explored casual leisure and the serious pursuits in the Arab and Iranian Middle East and North Africa. There is considerable evidence that all aspects of the Perspective are pursued to a greater or lesser extent there. Further application has continued with publication of a study of adult reading and a guide on leisure-based planning for retirement (Stebbins, 2013a and 2013b, respectively).
In all this, theoretic work related to the SLP has not flagged. Stebbins (2012) tackled in a small book the thorny question of the definition of leisure, introducing in the process the umbrella concept of the “serious pursuit” (serious leisure and devotee work). With Elie Cohen-Gewerc (Cohen-Gewerc & Stebbins, 2013) he explored the interplay of individuality and serious leisure. They examined how individual distinctiveness can be achieved by way of this form of leisure. The sense of career, which has been viewed as a distinguishing quality of serious leisure since the first statement on the latter in 1982, is explored in the amateur, hobbyist, and volunteer activities and, in some instances, on into devotee work (Stebbins, in press, a). This book has its practical side, in that the question of “what to do with my life” is answered by examining the multiplicity of fulfillment careers available in the serious pursuits. Another theoretic thrust follows from the work on positive sociology, in this instance linking the SLP to positive psychology (Stebbins, in press, b). On the theoretic plane key discussions have appeared, notably those generated by Shen and Yarnal (2010) and Scott (2012) on the Recreation Specialization and on the casual leisure-serious leisure (CL-SL) Continuum (see also Stebbins, 2013d).
Extensive research in the area continues apace, especially on sport, aging and retirement, casual leisure and serious leisure (particularly on the hobbies) and library and information science. Still, every category in the Bibliography has grown to some extent in recent years (see authors in each at www.seriousleisure.net). The following categories were especially vibrant during 2007-2014. Jinmoo Heo, often with Youngkhill Lee and colleagues, contributed exceptionally to the two categories of Sport and Aging. In this period Anne Fenech devoted herself to the study of Casual Leisure in cases of Therapeutic Recreation (neurorehabilitation). Sam Elkington also added substantially to the general literature on Serious Leisure. In Library and Information Science both Jenna Hartel and Crystal Fulton standout for their extensive contributions. And in the Hobbies Lee Davidson has been a most active contributor. Turning to Tourism --- particularly event analysis --- Don Getz is conspicuous for his work based on the SLP. Last but not least, Kirsten Holmes has written several articles and chapters during this period on volunteering in heritage administration.
A key synthesis of the SLP is presently underway, namely, a modular introduction to it written for undergraduate and graduate students (Elkington
& Stebbins, 2014). There is even talk of a journal.
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