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Leisure studies, leisure policy and social citizenship: a response to Rosemary Deem

In Leisure Studies 18(3) Rosemary Deem provides a sustained critique of an article which I published in Leisure Studies 17(1). As my intention in writing the article was to provoke a debate I welcome Deem’s response and I set out my response to her criticisms below. But rst, a mea culpa. When I initially submitted the article, the Managing Editor asked me to provide some personal explanation as to why I had developed the position outlined in the paper. I refused, preferring to rest the analysis on more objective developments in the changing nature of, and relations between, the public and commercial leisure sectors. However as Deem questions my motives for writing the article – ‘The existence of counter evidence might question what political as well as academic reasons there are for arguing against studies which, for example, relate social exclusion to leisure’ (Deem, 1999, p. 168) – it might be useful to begin my response with the explanation initially requested by the Managing Editor. I have been a reviewer for Leisure Studies since the late 1980s. Between 1993 and 1998 I was a member of the ‘editorial triumvirate’ of Leisure Studies and managing editor in 1995/6. During this period I read all submitted articles and I was struck both by the rather limited research agenda and the implicit ideological position which informed the majority of the papers (what I have referred to as the ‘normative citizenship paradigm’). With a few notable exceptions there were no ‘oppositional voices’. Allied to this the membership of the Leisure Studies Association declined from its high point in the late 1980s; leisure studies was fragmenting into sports studies, tourism studies, feminist studies and leisure-related topics were forming the basis for the development of new areas of study – consumer studies, media studies, cultural geography. My concerns about the apparent stagnation of leisure studies (Coalter, 1997, 1998) were clearly shared by others. For example, Roberts (1997, p. 375) commented that ‘leisure research and theory are weakened by too much inbreeding. Enquiries derived from an enclosed body of leisure theory soon exhaust the issues’. Other indications are Veal’s (1998) recent plea for a broadening of perspectives, the title and themes of the Leisure Studies Association’s 1998 conference Out of the Ghetto and even my Leisure Studies 19 (2000) 37–44