As the world grapples with the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, on almost every news website, across social media, as well as in its (many) absences, leisure has taken on new significance in both managing and negotiating a global crisis.
Leisure in the Time of Coronavirus: A Rapid Response, amidst the disruption, inconvenience, illness, fear, uncertainty, tragedy, and loss from COVID-19, generates discussions that enable leisure scholars to learn and to engage with wider debates about the crucial role of leisure in people's lives. The pandemic has brought tourism to a standstill with borders closed and travel restricted. From home (for those fortunate enough to have them), in physical isolation, and in attempts to socialize, at no time in recent memory has leisure seemed so vital, and yet also so hauntingly absent. Leisure, therefore, remains an important lens through which to view, question, and understand the world.
The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Leisure Sciences.
About the Author:
Brett Lashua lectures in Cultural Sociology at the Institute of Education, University College London. His scholarship is concerned with social inequalities read through youth leisure, popular music, critical cultural heritage, and urban geographies, underpinned by a commitment to participatory arts-based research methods.
Corey W. Johnson is Professor at the University of Waterloo. His theorizing and qualitative inquiry focuses on the power relations between dominant (white, male, heterosexual, etc.) and non-dominant populations in the cultural contexts of leisure, providing important insight into both the privileging and discriminatory practices in contemporary settings.
Diana C. Parry is Professor in Recreation and Leisure Studies and Associate Vice-President of Human Rights, Equity, and Inclusion at the University of Waterloo. Diana's research utilizes a variety of feminist theories to explore the personal and political links between women's leisure and women's health, broadly defined.
