SLRG Seminar: Leisure practices and lifecourse transitions: taking the long view
- When?
- Wednesday 15 May 2013, 13.00 hrs to 14.00 hrs
- Where?
- 45B AZ 04
- Open to:
- Alumni, Public, Staff, Students
- Speaker:
- Sue Venn, Research Fellow and Kate Burningham, Senior Lecturer CES, University of Surrey
- Admission price:
- No charge
Practice theory, as a means to understanding social change, emphasises how practices, such as cooking, shopping and leisure activities, evolve and change through time.
Yet the performance of everyday practices are contingent on access to sufficient time, which in itself varies over time, and never more so than during periods of major lifecourse transitions such as having a first child. Lifecourse transitions are also known to be points in time when people are more receptive to changing their practices in a more sustainable direction. In their recent paper on everyday time use and carbon emissions, Druckman et al (2012) found that leisure activities were associated with lower carbon emissions than non leisure activities, and as men spent more time on leisure activities than women, their carbon emissions arising from leisure activities were greater. However, this data is based on a one week ‘snapshot’, and does not capture the ‘long view’ of changing access to time through lifecourse transitions.
Drawing on qualitative interviews and weekly journals undertaken on three separate occasions over a period of 16-20 months, this paper will discuss the extent to which the undertaking of leisure practices changes, or remain the same, as men and women move through two different life course transitions, having a first child, or entering retirement. We will emphasise the importance of observing the impact of lifecourse transitions on the performance of leisure practices over an extended period of time in terms of highlighting the fluidity and transience of practices, and their concomitant negative and/or positive environmental implications.
http://www.sustainablelifestyles.ac.uk/
Please note that any views and opinions expressed in the seminar are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of RESOLVE, SLRG, ESRC, Defra, The Scottish Government or the University of Surrey
