Open AccessLeisure as a Field of Study in Higher Education
Author(s) -
Kas Mazurek,
Don Dawson
Publication year - 1989
Publication title -
canadian journal of higher education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2293-6602
pISSN - 0316-1218
DOI - 10.47678/cjhe.v19i2.188419
Subject(s) - legitimacy , field (mathematics) , identity (music) , sociology , multidisciplinary approach , maturity (psychological) , organizational field , discipline , higher education , leisure studies , metaphysics , social science , state (computer science) , epistemology , pedagogy , political science , recreation , law , aesthetics , institutional theory , politics , philosophy , mathematics , algorithm , computer science , pure mathematics
Leisure Studies is an emerging field of study in higher education, which is engaged in a struggle for academic legitimacy in Canada and elsewhere. The field and its research endeavours can be said to be characterized by a lack of paradigmatic maturity which may best be resolved by the philosophical questioning of the fundamental principles underlying its discourse. Toward this end, a metaphysics of leisure study is urged. In this way, a distinct identity for the field may develop. Leisure Studies, finally, is not an academic "discipline", but rather a multidisciplinary field of study distinguished by its substantive area of inquiry. The present paper is most directly a commentary on the state of Leisure Studies and research in Canadian universities, but many of its observations apply to the U.S.A. and Britain as well.