The burgeoning social scientific study of tourism has emphasized the
effects of the post-industrial economy on travel and place. However,
this volume takes some of these issues into a different area of leisure:
the spare-time carved out by people as part of their everyday lives -
time that is much more intimately juxtaposed with the pressures and
influences of work life, and which often involves specific bodily
practices associated with hobbies and sports. An important focus of the
book is the body as a site of identity formation, experience, and
disciplined recreation of the self. Contributors examine the ways
rituals, sports, and forms of bodily transformation mediate between
contemporary ideologies of freedom, choice and self-control.