Invisible Seasides: A New Way of Redeeming a Utopia’s Past and Imagining its Afterlife

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Tony Blackshaw (Sheffield Hallam University, UK)

Invisible Seasides

A New Way of Redeeming a Utopia’s Past and Imagining its Afterlife

Tony Blackshaw (Sheffield Hallam University, UK)

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Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Routledge
01 August 2025

Research methods: general; Globalization; Sociology: sport & leisure; Politics & government; Political economy

Series: Routledge Advances in Sociology

Invisible Seasides positions the seaside as a lens for understanding lived utopia, pinned in a certain place, an immovable feature in a landscape where our hopes and fears continue to unfold. Wide-ranging in theme, it brings a double perspective, past and present, to bear on how we understand contemporary seaside experience.

Presenting a magical paradox of the modern seaside, this book traces the development of a cultural phenomenon from the mid-1800s to the present day. In the process, it modifies the accepted narrative about its rise and fall, reappraising our understanding of the end of a Mass Utopia, and shining new light on the diversity of post-utopias that have emerged in its afterlife.

Fusing social theory, social history, and leisure studies, its thesis adroitly envisions the diverse density of the seaside through a critical lens, making the unfamiliar familiar and vice versa, providing us with an exemplar for a different way of thinking sociologically, which will be used by scholars from a range of different subject fields to encourage fresh reflection on social continuity and change.

By: Tony Blackshaw (Sheffield Hallam University UK)
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9780815354079
ISBN 10: 081535407X
Series: Routledge Advances in Sociology
Pages: 244
Publication Date: 01 August 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Tony Blackshaw is Emeritus Professor of Leisure Studies and Sociology at Sheffield Hallam University. He is the author of many books, including Re-Imagining Leisure Studies (2017), Leisure (2010), and Leisure Life: Myth, Masculinity and Modernity (2003).