Still speaking to ourselves: leisure studies in a wilderness of multiple modernities

Abstract

During the last 30 years, leisure scholars have tended to split into specialists on sport, tourism, and other "little leisures". Meanwhile, the voices of scholars who continue to write about "big leisure" rarely travel beyond their own networks. This paper explains how leisure research and theory commanded wider audiences during the early and mid-twentieth century. This was in binary international political contexts in which democracies and fascist countries, then after 1945 capitalism and communism, each claimed to be offering a superior way of life. Since the "revolutions from below" in 1989, a binary has been absent. The capitalist market economy has spread globally, with no serious competitor. However, traditional national and religious cultures have not weakened. Also, the present-day world contains a mix of liberal democracies, managed democracies, and autocratic dynasties. We have entered an era of multiple modernities. Up to now, none have needed the theories and evidence of leisure scholars to legitimize the regimes. However, this paper identifies an emergent binary, created by economic competition between super-powers in South and East Asia and the West, which offer contrasting conceptions of a good life. It is argued that engagement with these differences is a route to renewed political relevance for global leisure studies in the 2020s and beyond.