Towards a Critical Sociology of Children’s Leisure

Abstract

AbstractIn this article, I contend that the sociology of leisure in particular and leisure studies in general has been shaped by adult-centric assumptions which have marginalized children’s perspectives on and experiences of leisure within theory building exercises. Consequently, leisure researchers who do empirical work on children’s leisure have largely eschewed critical debates about children’s agency, social positioning and lived citizenship among others that have been developed by the ‘new’ sociology of childhood. Failure to build bridges with other areas of scholarship such as sociological childhood studies, has intensified the intellectual isolation of leisure research. Here, I propose a sustained dialogue between leisure studies and childhood studies which will not only widen the intellectual breadth of leisure theory and make it more inclusive, but also enable leisure studies to have an impact on the new social studies of childhood. In illustrating what such a collaboration might entail, I outline a conceptual schema of three interlocking genres of children’s leisure – namely organized, family and casual leisure – based on existing studies conducted by researchers in leisure, childhood and family studies that offer a roadmap for the development of a new critical sociology of children’s leisure.