Leisure and Society SOCIO4139

  • Academic Session: 2024-25
  • School: School of Social and Political Sciences
  • Credits: 20
  • Level: Level 4 (SCQF level 10)
  • Typically Offered: Either Semester 1 or Semester 2 (Alternate Years)
  • Available to Visiting Students: Yes
  • Collaborative Online International Learning: No

Short Description

This course examines the role of leisure in society. It critically engages with a range of theoretical perspectives on leisure in historical and contemporary contexts. It requires engagement with different leisure practices evaluating multiple and intersecting social, spatial and environmental inequalities.

Timetable

Seminar: two hours per week for 10 weeks

Requirements of Entry

Mandatory Entry Requirements:

The entry requirements for joint and single honours students in sociology

Excluded Courses

None

Assessment

Summative Essay (100%, 4000 words)

Course Aims

The aim of this course is to introduce students to leisure as a set of historical, social and geographical practices. Leisure is also a theoretically driven and contested concept. Leisure, in late capitalist societies, is marked by consumption, personal identity narratives and time away from work. How and in what ways people practice and do leisure is shaped by class, age, gender, race, disability, region and nationality. Leisure exemplifies a range of personal tastes and interests that are driven by broader societal opportunities and constraints. Leisure practices display and engage in health and wellbeing narratives, but equally are sites of inequality, power and surveillance. This module will provide students with opportunities to analyse their own leisure practices through critical engagement with theories of leisure. It will also situate leisure practices in comparative and culturally specific contexts.

Intended Learning Outcomes of Course

By the end of this course students will be able to:

• Demonstrate an understanding of some of the main theoretical approaches to leisure research

 • Identify and analyse the social rules, routines and conventions that shape leisure practices in a particular context

 • Critically evaluate a range of scholarly research on leisure and society

•Use relevant theories to think sociologically about one substantive topic from the module.

Minimum Requirement for Award of Credits

Students must submit at least 75% by weight of the components (including examinations) of the course's summative assessment.