Leisure and Positive Psychology

Linking Activities with Positiveness

Robert A. Stebbins

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781349564965
  9781137569936
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137569943
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Policy
• Index: Social Sciences

This book explores, from a leisure studies perspective, the central role that leisure has to play in positive psychology, exploring themes such as flow, fulfilment, altruism, well-being, and interpersonal relationships.

1

The Serious Leisure Perspective

Abstract: The serious leisure perspective (SLP) can be described, in simplest terms, as the theoretical framework that synthesizes three main forms of leisure showing, at once, their distinctive features, similarities, and interrelationships. The forms consist of the (1) serious pursuits (i.e., serious leisure [amateurism, hobbyism, and serious volunteering] and devotee work), (2) casual leisure, and (3) project-based leisure. The serious pursuits are distinguished by six qualities, are motivated by several special rewards, sometimes including flow, and offer a leisure career. Eight types of casual leisure are presented along with their benefits. Project-based leisure fits into leisure lifestyle in its own peculiar way as interstitial activity, like some casual leisure but not like most serious leisure. It can therefore help shape a person’s optimal leisure lifestyle.

Keywords: Amateurs; casual leisure; devotee work; flow; hobbyists; leisure career; project-based leisure; serious leisure; serious leisure perspective; volunteers

Stebbins, Robert A. Leisure and Positive Psychology: Linking Activities with Positiveness. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. DOI: 10.1057/9781137569943.0004.

The serious leisure perspective (SLP) can be described, in simplest terms, as the theoretical framework that synthesizes three main forms of leisure showing, at once, their distinctive features, similarities, and interrelationships (the SLP is discussed in detail in Stebbins, 2007/2015; 2001a; 1992). Additionally the Perspective (wherever Perspective appears as shorthand for SLP, to avoid confusion, the first letter will be capitalized) considers how the three forms – serious pursuits (serious leisure/devotee work), casual leisure, and project-based leisure – are shaped by various psychological, social, cultural, and historical conditions. Each form serves as a conceptual umbrella for a range of types of related activities. That the Perspective takes its name from the first of these should, in no way, suggest that it be regarded, in some abstract sense, as the most important or superior of the three. Rather the Perspective is so titled, simply because it got its start in the study of serious leisure; such leisure is, strictly from the standpoint of intellectual invention, the godfather of the other two. Furthermore serious leisure has become the benchmark from which analyses of casual and project-based leisure have often been undertaken. So naming the Perspective after the first facilitates intellectual recognition; it keeps the idea in familiar territory for all concerned.

My research findings and theoretical musings over the past 40 years have nevertheless evolved and coalesced into a typological map of the world of leisure (for a brief history of the Perspective, see the history page at www.seriousleisure.net or for a longer version, see Stebbins, 2007/2015, chap. 6). That is, so far as known at present, all leisure (at least in Western society) can be classified according to one of the three forms and their several types and subtypes. More precisely the SLP offers a classification and explanation of all leisure activities and experiences, as these two are framed in the psychological, social, cultural, geographical, and historical conditions in which each activity and accompanying experience take place.

FIGURE 1.1 The serious leisure perspective

source: Diagram formulated by Jenna Hartel

Serious pursuits

In this chapter serious leisure and devotee work are placed under the heading of serious pursuits, as its two types. The present chapter explains this classificatory change, from what was to this point in the history of the SLP a separation of the two as leisure and work, respectively. The justification for this change is simple: devotee work is essentially leisure. So we should call this spade a spade and explore it as part of the Perspective.

Serious leisure

Serious leisure, one of the two types of serious pursuit, is the systematic pursuit of an amateur, hobbyist, or volunteer activity sufficiently substantial, interesting, and fulfilling for the participant to find a (leisure) career there acquiring and expressing a combination of its special skills, knowledge, and experience. I coined the term (Stebbins, 1982) to express the way the people he interviewed and observed viewed the importance of these three kinds of activity in their everyday lives. The adjective “serious” (a word my research respondents often used) embodies such qualities as earnestness, sincerity, importance, and carefulness, rather than gravity, solemnity, joylessness, distress, and anxiety. Although the second set of terms occasionally describes serious leisure events, they are uncharacteristic of them and fail to nullify, or, in many cases, even dilute, the overall fulfillment gained by the participants. The idea of “career” in this definition follows sociological tradition, where careers are seen as available in all substantial, complex roles, including those in leisure. Finally, as we shall see shortly, serious leisure is distinct from casual leisure and project-based leisure.

Amateurs are found in art, science, sport, and entertainment, where they are invariably linked in a variety of ways with professional counterparts. The two can be distinguished descriptively in that the activity in question constitutes a livelihood for professionals but not amateurs. Furthermore, most professionals work full-time at the activity whereas all amateurs pursue it part-time. The part-time professionals in art and entertainment complicate this picture; although they work part-time, their work is judged by other professionals and by the amateurs as of professional quality. Amateurs and professionals are locked in and therefore defined by a system of relations linking them and their publics – the “professional-amateur-public system,” or P-A-P system (discussed in more detail in Stebbins, 2007/2015, pp. 6–8, including Yoder’s [1997] addition of the C-PC-AP system). But note here that enactment of the core activity by the professionals in a particular field, to influence amateurs there, must be sufficiently visible to those amateurs. If the amateurs, in general, have no idea of the prowess of their professional counterparts, the latter become irrelevant as role models, and the leisure side of the activity remains at a hobbyist level.

Hobbyists lack this professional alter ego, suggesting that, historically, all amateurs were hobbyists before their fields professionalized. Both types are drawn to their leisure pursuits significantly more by self-interest than by altruism, whereas volunteers engage in activities requiring a more or less equal blend of these two motives. Hobbyists may be classified in five types: collectors, makers and tinkerers, noncompetitive activity participants (e.g., fishing, hiking, orienteering), hobbyist sports and games (e.g., ultimate Frisbee, croquet, gin rummy), and the liberal arts hobbies.

The liberal arts hobbyists are enamored of the systematic acquisition of knowledge for its own sake. Many of them accomplish this by reading voraciously in a field of art, sport, cuisine, language, culture, history, science, philosophy, politics, or literature (Stebbins, 1994). But some of them go beyond this to expand their knowledge still further through cultural tourism, documentary videos, television programs, and similar resources. Although the matter has yet to be studied through research, it is theoretically possible to separate buffs from consumers in the liberal arts hobbies of sport, cuisine, and the fine and entertainment arts. Some people – call them consumers – more or less uncritically consume restaurant fare, sports events, or displays of art (concerts, shows, exhibitions) as pure entertainment and sensory stimulation (casual leisure), whereas others – call them buffs – participate in these same situations as more or less knowledgeable experts, as serious leisure (for more on this distinction, see Stebbins, 2002, chap. 5). The ever rarer Renaissance man of our day may also be classified here, even though such people avoid specializing in one field of learning to acquire, instead, a somewhat more superficial knowledge of a variety of fields. Being broadly well-read is a (liberal arts) hobby of its own.

What have been referred to as “the nature-challenge activities” (Davidson & Stebbins, 2011) fall primarily under the hobbyist heading of noncompetitive, rule-based activity participation. True, actual competitions are sometimes held in, for instance, snowboarding, kayaking, and mountain biking (e.g., fastest time over a particular course), but mostly beating nature is thrill enough. Moreover, other nature hobbies exist, which are also challenging, but in very different ways. Some, most notably fishing and hunting, in essence exploit the natural environment. Still others center on appreciation of the outdoors, among them hiking, backpacking, bird watching, and horseback riding.

Volunteering is uncoerced, intentionally productive, altruistic activity engaged in during free time. Engaged in as leisure, it is, thus, activity that people want to do (Stebbins, 2013). It is through volunteer work – it is done in either an informal or a formal setting – that these people provide a service or benefit to one or more individuals (who must be outside that person’s family). Usually volunteers receive no pay, though people serving in volunteer programs are sometimes compensated for out-of-pocket expenses. Moreover, in the field of nonprofit studies, since no volunteer work is involved, giving, say, blood, money, or clothing as an altruistic act is not, strictly speaking, volunteering. Meanwhile, in the typical case, volunteers who are altruistically providing a service or benefit to others are themselves also benefiting from various rewards experienced during this process (e.g., pleasant social interaction, self-enriching experiences, sense of contributing to nonprofit group success). In other words volunteering is motivated by two basic attitudes: altruism and self-interest.

The conception of volunteering that squares best with our interest in leisure and positiveness revolves, in significant part, around a central subjective motivational question: it must be determined whether volunteers feel they are engaging in an enjoyable (casual leisure), fulfilling (serious leisure), or enjoyable or fulfilling (project-based leisure) core activity that they have had the option to accept or reject on their own terms. A key element in the leisure conception of volunteering is the felt absence of coercion, moral or otherwise, to participate in the volunteer activity (Stebbins, 1996), an element that, in “marginal volunteering” (Stebbins, 2001), may be experienced in degrees, as more or less coercive. The reigning conception of volunteering in nonprofit sector research is not that of volunteering as leisure, but rather volunteering as unpaid work. The first – an economic conception – defines volunteering as the absence of payment as livelihood, whether in money or in kind. This definition, for the most part, leaves unanswered the messy question of motivation so crucial to the second, positive sociological, definition, which is a volitional conception.

Six qualities

The serious pursuits are further defined by six distinctive qualities, qualities uniformly found among its amateurs, hobbyists, and volunteers. One is the occasional need to persevere. Participants who want to continue experiencing the same level of fulfillment in the activity have to meet certain challenges from time to time. Thus, musicians must practice assiduously to master difficult musical passages, baseball players must throw repeatedly to perfect favorite pitches, and volunteers must search their imaginations for new approaches with which to help children with reading problems. It happens in all three types of serious leisure and in devotee work that deepest fulfillment sometimes comes at the end of the activity rather than during it, from sticking with it through thick and thin, from conquering adversity.

Another quality distinguishing all the serious pursuits is the opportunity to follow a (leisure, or leisure-work) career in the endeavor, a career shaped by its own special contingencies, turning points, and stages of achievement and involvement. A career that, in some fields, notably certain arts and sports, may nevertheless include decline. Moreover, most, if not all, careers here owe their existence to a third quality: serious leisure participants make significant personal effort using their specially acquired knowledge, training, or skill and, indeed at times, all three. Careers for serious leisure participants unfold along lines o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1  The Serious Leisure Perspective
• 2  Positiveness in the Serious Pursuits
• 3  Interpersonal Relationships
• 4  Contemplation and Spirituality
• 5  Altruism
• 6  Contributions to Community and Organization
• 7  Quality of Life and Well-Being
• 8  Casual and Project-Based Leisure
• 9  Play and Creativity
• Conclusion
• Index