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.
Introduction: Leisure in the Time of Coronavirus: A Rapid Response Special Issue 1. Color-Coded Activity Charts and Beachbody: “Momming” in COVID-19 2. Single Women’s Leisure during the Coronavirus Pandemic 3. Pandemic Motherhood and the Academy: A Critical Examination of the Leisure-Work Dichotomy 4. Laughing While Black: Resistance, Coping and the Use of Humor as a Pandemic Pastime among Blacks 5. Beyond Hypervisibility and Fear: British Chinese Communities’ Leisure and Health-Related Experiences in the Time of Coronavirus 6. Capitalism and the (il)Logics of Higher Education’s COVID-19 Response: A Black Feminist Critique 7. “If We’re Lost, we Are Lost Together”: Leisure and Relationality 8. Power and Social Control of Youth during the COVID-19 Pandemic 9. Leisure Behind Bars: The Realities of COVID-19 for Youth Connected to the Justice System 10. Rainbows, Teddy Bears and ‘Others’: The Cultural Politics of Children’s Leisure Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic 11. Are You OK, Boomer? Intensification of Ageism and Intergenerational Tensions on Social Media Amid COVID-19 12. Promoting Older Adults’ Physical Activity and Social Well-Being during COVID-19 13. Prosumption, Networks and Value during a Global Pandemic: Lockdown Leisure and COVID-19 14. “Last Night a DJ Saved My Life” @Dnice #ClubQuarantine: Digitally Mediating Ritualistic Leisure Spaces during Isolation 15. COVID-19 and its Impact on Volunteering: Moving Towards Virtual Volunteering 16. “Washing Hands, Reaching Out” – Popular Music, Digital Leisure and Touch during the COVID-19 Pandemic 17. What Do You (Really) Meme? Pandemic Memes as Social Political Repositories 18. Self-Isolated but Not Alone: Community Management Work in the Time of a Pandemic 19. Masturbating to Remain (Close to) the Same: Sexually Explicit Media as Habitual Media 20. #QuarantineChallenge2k20: Leisure in the Time of the Pandemic 21. Why Don’t We Play Pandemic? Analog Gaming Communities in Lockdown 22. By Bread Alone: Baking as Leisure, Performance, Sustenance, During the COVID-19 Crisis 23. Distancing from the Present: Nostalgia and Leisure in Lockdown 24. Less Sex, but More Sexual Diversity: Changes in Sexual Behavior during the COVID-19 Coronavirus Pandemic 25. Dogs Unleashed: The Positive Role Dogs Play during COVID-19 26. Queer Isolation or Queering Isolation? Reflecting upon the Ramifications of COVID-19 on the Future of Queer Leisure Spaces 27. This Must Be the Place: Distraction, Connection, and “Space-Building” in the Time of Quarantine 28. Neighboring in the Time of Coronavirus? Paying Civil Attention While Walking the Neighborhood 29. Rural-Urban Interdependencies: Thinking through the Implications of Space, Leisure, Politics and Health 30. From Gym Rat to Rock Star! Negotiating Constraints to Leisure Experience via a Strengths and Substitutability Approach 31. Leisure Matters: Cross Continent Conversations in a Time of Crisis 32. Where Is Leisure When Death Is Present? 33. On Not Knowing: COVID-19 and Decolonizing Leisure Research 34. Pandemic Precarity: Aging and Social Engagement 35. A People’s Future of Leisure Studies: Leisure with the Enemy Under COVID-19 36. Biopolitics, Essential Labor, and the Political-Economic Crises of COVID-19 37. Mass Hysteria, Manufacturing Crisis and the Legal Reconstruction of Acceptable Exercise during a Pandemic 38. Football is “the most important of the least important things”: The Illusion of Sport and COVID-19 39. Hosting the Olympics in Times of a Pandemic: Historical Insights from Antwerp 1920 40. Festivals Post Covid-19 41. Purveyors of One Health: The Ecological Imperative Driving the Future of Leisure Services 42. Thinking through the Disruptive Effects and Affects of the Coronavirus with Feminist New Materialism 43. Adventure in the Age of COVID-19: Embracing Microadventures and Locavism in a Post-Pandemic World 44. The Future is Unwritten: Listening to the Rhythms of COVID-19 45. Advice for Leisure Studies: Reflections on the Pandemic From a Retired Professor
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.
