Social Leisure Activities - Assignment Example

Leisure Concepts Journal By student’s name Course code+ name Professor’s name University name City, state Date of submission Week 6: Leisure, Family and the Lifecycle During this week’s lecture, we discussed how leisure changes during the various stages of life. Such change may be influenced by various factors such as education, family, employment, physical capability, housing as well as an individual’s needs. Most people in the society experienced three careers namely work, family and leisure. However, today life has become more complex, for example, where traditional families have changed to childless couples and work has changed to job for life. Due to such changes people have embraced the idea of the life course. Life course is where a person’s life is divided into different periods or stages where each stage has its priorities. These stages include adulthood, young adulthood, middle adulthood and elder adulthood (Erikson, 1963). One of the important aspects of life that influences leisure is the family as the fundamental building block of the society. The family has changed such that today there are childless couples, a departure from the traditional families. Such change affects leisure in that there will be less family based community sports and activities and more couple-based activities. There is no doubt that leisure is affected by the changes in the family structure and the changing ways of life today. This lecture left some questions lingering in my mind like how do the new lifestyles that come with the change in family structure affect leisure? Today people have become more individualized. The sense of community and social activities is slowly fading away which, based on the discussions in this lecture, is also likely to change leisure trends. The traditional social leisure activities such as sports activities where the communities came together will be replaced by individualised, couple-based and family-based activities. Despite these changes, this lecture has taught me that leisure will remain to be a key aspect of people’s lives despite the changes experienced in the society. People will always find different forms of leisure that fit into their current stage in life. Different forms of leisure will, therefore, emerge as the social structure as well as the family structure changes. This is evidenced by the rising couple-based leisure which has arisen as a result of the increase in childless couples. Week 7: Leisure and Play This week’s lecture focussed on the importance of leisure in the development of children. Most societies agree that play is an important part of childhood and that learning and development in children occur through play. During this lecture, we focused more on the importance of leisure/play in the development of a child. Under this sub-topic, we dealt with four different types of development namely cognitive, social, emotional and physical development. Under cognitive development, children who are allowed to play develop a higher creativity and problem-solving ability. This is achieved through divergent thinking, involving looking for new ways of solving a problem and convergent thinking, involving using available information to solve a problem. Play also stimulates social development. Social development is concerned with a child’s ability to learn to function in the society. Play teaches children how to socialise and interact with other people in the society. Throughout the four stages of psychosocial development namely infancy, toddler, pre-school and school age children develop self-esteem and learn to socialise (Erikson, 1960). Emotional development focuses on the child’s understanding of punishment, obedience and authority. Play helps children to interact with others and also teaches them about rules, correct and fair behaviour. Play also assists in the physical development of children. Play leads to fine motor coordination in children and the acquisition of skills and physical prowess. It also helps prevent childhood obesity. I find this week’s lecture interesting in that the materials studied tend to challenge the way in which parents are raising their children. There are increasing cases of helicopter parents, that is, parents who raise their children in an overprotective way. Based on this week’s lecture I have learnt that such parenthood is not good for a child. Children must be allowed to choose and to make decisions on their own. They need to choose what to play because forcing them to play adversely affects the developmental advantages of play. Children learn through experimenting and while their play should be supervised, parents must let their children experiment and explore their childhood. This is the only way to ensure that children enjoy the developmental benefits of play. Week 8: Social Meanings of Leisure: The Work Ethic and Gender This week’s lecture is concerned about the social meanings of leisure, that is, the way leisure patterns differ based on the society. The social meanings of leisure are influenced by two factors namely the work ethic and the role of women in Australian historical culture. The Protestant work ethic has had a great influence on leisure. The Protestant work ethic arose from the Reformation, a religious movement which formulated the Protestant view of Christianity. Before this period, manual labour was held in low regard and leisure time was valued. However, the Protestant work ethic introduced a work-oriented society where leisure was considered to be of less worth. The basis for this movement was that God rewarded those who worked hard. People were encouraged to work hard to be rewarded in the afterlife. Work was regarded as the path to godliness and leisure as the path to sin. This view led to the stigma surrounding the area of leisure. There was also the Confucian work ethic that was common among the East Asian cultures. The Confucian work ethic advocated for more work hours and less leisure time. The role of women in Australian historical culture begins with the importance attributed to culture and sport in Australia. Sport is the image of Australia and it is the most recognised form of leisure. It plays an important role in Australia’s culture. Despite the image, gender inequality is evident in the sporting industry in Australia. Men dominate many organised sports while women participants are few. There is a tradition that portrays women’s role as to support men in sports and as a result, men continue to dominate the recreational activities. Women’s sport is underrepresented in the media and there is a trend that supports sexploitation of women’s sport. The lecture discusses the gendered patterns in leisure which favour men over women. The role of women in leisure and sports is under-appreciated and women in sports receive less support and appreciation. This lecture is an effort to mobilise the Australian community to change their mindset about the role of women in sports by ensuring that more women participate in sports. The lecture emphasises on the need to abandon the traditions introduced by the Protestant work ethics and to give both women and men equal opportunities in sports. Leisure is as important as work hence it should not be shunned. Week 9: The Dark Side of Leisure This week’s lecture is a discussion on the dark side of leisure. Although leisure focuses on behaviour that is positive, there are times when people engage in negative behaviour. There are varying opinions as to whether leisure should be good to an individual or good to the society too. However, since leisure is not ethical or morally upright, the issue of the goodness of leisure varies significantly. Leisure is mainly about those activities that conform to societal norms. However, leisure activities may also occur outside of the boundaries set by societal norms. Such behaviours that are not socially acceptable lead to social dysfunction and this amounts to deviant leisure. Deviant leisure is of three types namely invasive, mephitic and wild leisure (Rojek, 1999). Invasive is leisure that involves self-loathing such as self-abuse and drugs. Mephitic leisure is concerned with behaviour that causes harm to others such as sex tourism, aggression, pedophilia and serial killing. Wild leisure involves behaviour that pushes limits over the edge for pleasure such as vandalism, dangerous driving and computer hacking. Such kind of deviant leisure affects not only those who practice such behaviour but also those close to them and the society. The major examples of deviant leisure that have adverse effects on the individual and the society are gambling, internet pornography and recreational drug use. Leisure is meant to be freely chosen and should be pleasurable to the individual. However, the question remains whether there should be boundaries to how far a person can go in their leisure activities. I have learnt that although an important part of leisure is the freedom of choice, there may be a need to create social boundaries on what is permissible. Leisure may be an individual’s choice, but as discussed in this lecture, it has the potential to affect the society. Deviant forms of leisure such as pornography, drug use and gambling should be proscribed by the society because their adverse effects are felt by the individual, those close to them and the society as a whole. Week 10: The Politics of Leisure This week’s lecture was a discussion on the meaning of politics and how politics affect leisure. Leisure is accepted as a social institution and, therefore, it interacts with other social institutions such as the government and the economy. Decisions on leisure are usually made based on political grounds as well as for political reasons. Politics refers to the application of power in the society which may be in the form of legal, physical or economic power. Such power is used to meet the needs and interests of individuals as well as groups. In Australia, decisions by the government are based on political party ideologies and this affects the funding of health, education and even leisure. Politicians support sport in Australia to be gain support of the electorate. Traditional and also in the modern world, leisure and sports are used as tools to deal with community aggression or negative opinion. Today elections may be scheduled at a time when there are other leisure or sporting activities such as Olympics of festivals as a way to divert people’s attention from the real issues affecting them. Leisure, and especially sports, is usually used by lobby groups to put pressure on political bodies to make decisions that favour the lobby groups. Funding may also be determined by pressure from leisure groups. Sportsmen and women have boycotted global sporting events for political reasons. The sporting arena has also been used to advance certain political ideologies such as Black power salute to push for the agenda of the Black Power Movement. This lecture exposed me to a side of leisure that I did not know much about. I never understood how leisure and politics could be linked but after this lecture, I was able to understand that leisure is linked to other social institutions. Sports and leisure are important pillars of the society. They serve social interests as can be seen in the way sports play an important role in Australia’s image. The place that leisure occupies in the society is so crucial that it has a political significance in itself. Politicians will want to be associated with sports and sports men and women all for individual and political reasons. Sports lobby group will also use sports to influence the government’s decision-making. Indeed leisure is intertwined with politics and other social institutions. Read More