Japan’s Nanzoin Temple is famous for its huge statue of a reclining Buddha. Its custodians are less laidback about the hordes of tourists the temple attracts. Signs in 12 languages now warn foreign visitors they may not enter in large groups.
It’s part of anti-tourist sentiment, driven by “the bad manners and abhorrent actions” of some visitors from abroad, reportedly growing all over Japan – and elsewhere in the world.
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According to Urban Dictionary,Serious leisure is the systematic pursuit of an amateur, hobbyist, or volunteer activity sufficiently substantial, interesting, and fulfilling for the participant to find a (leisure) career there acquiring and expressing a combination of its special skills, knowledge, and experience. The term was coined by Robert A. Stebbins.
Examples include amateur musicians, athletes, scientists, and entertainers. Among the hobbyists are collectors and people who make things (e.g., quilts, furniture, pastries). Serious leisure volunteers are found, among other places, serving in hospitals, nonprofit organizations, museums, and zoos.
The serious leisure perspective” (SLP) is the name of the theoretic framework that bridges and synthesizes three main forms of leisure, known as serious leisure, casual leisure, and project-based leisure. Research began in 1973 on the first of these, and has continued since that time, while work on casual leisure and then on project-based leisure came subsequently (see History section of this site for more details). Within each form, a variety of types and subtypes have also emerged over the years. That this Perspective takes its name from the first of these should, in no way, suggest that it is to be regarded, in some abstract sense, as the most important or superior of the three. Rather, the Perspective is so titled, simply because it got its start in the study of serious leisure; such leisure is, strictly from the standpoint of intellectual invention, the godfather of the other two. A map of the SLP is available at the SLP Diagrams page of this website.
Leisure is defined in the SLP as un-coerced, contextually framed activity engaged in during free time, which people want to do and, using their abilities and resources, actually do in either a satisfying or a fulfilling way (or both).
Serious leisure is the systematic pursuit of an amateur, hobbyist, or volunteer core activity that is highly substantial, interesting, and fulfilling and where, in the typical case, participants find a career in acquiring and expressing a combination of its special skills, knowledge, and experience (Stebbins, 1992, p.3). The adjective “serious” (a word Stebbins’ research respondents often used) embodies such qualities as earnestness, sincerity, importance, and carefulness. This adjective, basically a folk term, signals the importance of these three types of activity in the everyday lives of participants, in that pursuing the three eventually engenders deep self-fulfillment.
Amateurs are found in art, science, sport, and entertainment, where they are inevitably linked, one way or another, with professional counterparts who coalesce, along with the public whom the two groups share, into a three-way system of relations and relationships. By contrast, hobbyists lack the professional alter ego of amateurs, although they sometimes have commercial equivalents and often have small publics who take an interest in what they do. The professionals are identified and defined in (economic rather than sociological) terms that relate well to amateurs and hobbyists, namely, as workers who are dependent on the income from an activity that other people pursue with little or no remuneration as leisure (see Stebbins, 2007, pp. 6-8).
Hobbyists are classified according to five categories: 1) collectors, 2) makers and tinkerers, 3) activity participants (in noncompetitive, rule-based, pursuits such as fishing and barbershop singing), 4) players of sports and games (in competitive, rule-based activities with no professional counterparts like long-distance running and competitive swimming) and 5) the enthusiasts of the liberal arts hobbies, which are primarily reading pursuits.
Volunteers, whether pursuing serious, casual, or project-based leisure, offer un-coerced help, either formally or informally, with no or, at most, token pay, for the benefit of both other people (beyond the volunteer’s family) and the volunteer. Nevertheless, the reigning conception of volunteering in nonprofit sector research is not that of volunteering as leisure (volitional conception), but rather volunteering as unpaid work. This latter, economic, conception defines volunteering as the absence of payment for a livelihood, whether in money or in kind. This definition largely avoids the messy question of motivation so crucial to the volitional conception. A theoretic typology of volunteers and volunteering is available in Reflections 16 (Digital Library). Also see the Map of the SLP (Resources).
Occupational devotees are people who are inspired by“occupational devotion,” by a strong, positive attachment to a form of self-enhancing work, where the sense of achievement is high and the core activity (set of tasks) is endowed with such intense appeal that the line between this work and leisure is virtually erased (Stebbins, 2004b). “Devotee work” is serious leisure from which the worker gains a livelihood.
Serious pursuits is the umbrella concept encompassing serious leisure and devotee work (Stebbins, 2012). See the SLP map in Resources.
Serious leisure is further distinguished from casual leisure by six characteristics found exclusively or in highly elaborated form only in the first. These characteristics are: 1) need to persevere at the activity, 2) availability of a leisure career, 3) need to put in effort to gain skill andknowledge, 4) realization of various special benefits, 5) unique ethos and social world, and 6) an attractive personal and social identity.
Casual leisure is immediately, intrinsically rewarding; and it is a relatively short-lived, pleasurable activity requiring little or no special training to enjoy it. It is fundamentally hedonic; it is engaged in for the significant level of pure enjoyment, or pleasure, found there (Stebbins, 1997). It is also the classificatory home of much of the deviant leisure discussed by Rojek (1997, pp. 392-393). Among its types are: play (including dabbling), relaxation (e.g., sitting, napping, strolling), passive entertainment (e.g., TV, books, recorded music), active entertainment (e.g., games of chance, party games), sociable conversation, and sensory stimulation (e.g., sex, eating, drinking). Casual volunteering is also a type of casual leisure as is “pleasurable aerobic activity,” or casual leisure requiring effort sufficient to cause marked increase in respiration and heart rate (Stebbins, 2004a). Casual leisure is considerably less substantial, and offers no career of the sort just described for serious leisure. In broad, colloquial language casual leisure, hedonic as it is, could serve as the scientific term for doing what comes naturally. Yet, despite the seemingly trivial nature of most casual leisure, I argue elsewhere that it is nonetheless important in personal and social life (Stebbins, 2001b).
Project-based leisure is a short-term, moderately complicated, either one-shot or occasional, though infrequent, creative undertaking carried out in free time (Stebbins, 2005). Such leisure involves considerable planning, effort, and sometimes skill or knowledge, but for all that is not of the serious variety nor intended to develop into such. Nor is it casual leisure. The adjective “occasional” describes widely spaced undertakings for such regular occasions as arts festivals, sports events, religious holidays, individual birthdays, or national holidays while “creative” stresses that the undertaking results in something new or different, showing imagination, skill, or knowledge. Although most projects would appear to be continuously pursued until completed, it is conceivable that some might be interrupted for several weeks, months, even years.
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When choosing a home, it’s very important to consider the surrounding neighborhood as well as the home itself. Each neighborhood has its own characteristics including degree of safety, crime and physical appearance. While some neighborhoods can cause a home’s value to fall, others, such as gated communities, help homes resist market trends and retain value over time.
In its modern form, a gated community (or walled community) is a form of residential community or housing estate containing strictly controlled entrances for pedestrians, bicycles, and automobiles, and often characterized by a closed perimeter of walls and fences. Similar walls and gates have separated quarters of some cities for centuries. Gated communities usually consist of small residential streets and include various shared amenities. For smaller communities, these amenities may include only a park or other common area. For larger communities, it may be possible for residents to stay within the community for most daily activities. Gated communities are a type of common interest development, but are distinct from intentional communities.
A gated community offers increased security and safety but also comes with a cost.
The term “gated community” simply refers to any type of neighborhood that has controlled access using one or more gates that residents or visitors must pass through. Some have a guard booth with a security staff to ensure that only residents or guests pass the gate, while others use an automatic gate that residents must open with a key card or remote control. Most gated communities have a name and a clear geographic definition as marked by the barriers and gates that control access to the area. Gated communities may exist in any location including cities, towns and rural areas. They also range in size from a few homes to several dozen.
One of the primary purposes of a gated community is to offer its residents safety that they wouldn’t experience in nearby non-gated communities. One way a gated community increases safety is by eliminating through traffic. Without drivers passing through the gated community, traffic is restricted to residents and guests. This makes it safer for children to walk or play near streets, and also reduces traffic accidents. Gated communities with security staff also restrict access to pedestrians, which may be able to reduce the chance of vandalism, theft and other crimes.
Besides safety, gated communities offer other advantages to residents. Only the residents have access to public areas, which may include parks and sports facilities like tennis courts and a community pool. Gated communities in cities may encourage residents who would otherwise live in the suburbs to become urban dwellers, which can help with urban redevelopment. Many gated communities consist of luxury homes and high-income residents, which can make living in a gated community a status symbol.
Gated communities can impact the local economy in several ways. The homes inside gated communities tend to retain their value better during market downturns. Along with the high-income residents who populate many gated communities, this can offer a tax boost to the municipalities that include gated communities. However, gated communities can also encourage economic inequality by creating a physical barrier between high- and low-income neighborhoods. The presence of a nearby gated community can actually cause home values outside the community to suffer by comparison.
Given that gated communities are spatially a type of enclave, Setha M. Low, an anthropologist, has argued that they have a negative effect on the net social capital of the broader community outside the gated community. Some gated communities, usually called guard-gated communities, are staffed by private security guards and are often home to high-value properties, and/or are set up as retirement villages. Some gated communities are secure enough to resemble fortresses and are intended as such.
Not all gated communities offer the level of safety residents may expect. Unauthorized access is available to anyone who disables a gate or poses as a visitor, and communities with lax security may be no safer than surrounding neighborhoods. They can even become targets of criminals who expect the homes inside to include more valuable possessions. A gated community can also promote a general feeling of social paranoia, implying that other parts of the area are unsafe and the gated community is necessary to protect residents. Finally, gated communities may cost residents more than comparable homes in the region that aren’t gated, regardless of any real benefits.
A society is often constituted to run the day to day affairs of the community, This society behaves as mini parliament in most of the cases. The office bearers of the society consider them Bosses and are often indulged in corruption and insulting other home owners.
Economic growth provides benefits and costs in the region in which it occurs. It has a positive impact on nearby localities if jobs, population, and wealth spill over into these communities. Alternatively, it has adverse effects on the nearby localities if growth in the core region attracts people and economic activity away from these peripheral areas. Spread refers to the situation where the positive impacts on nearby localities and labor markets exceed the adverse impacts. Backwash occurs if the adverse effects dominate and the level of economic activity in the peripheral communities declines.
The adverse rural-to-urban flows occur in conjunction with the spillover of people, jobs, and funds from the growing core to peripheral areas (spread effects). The size and geographical extent of the beneficial and adverse forces on rural areas depend on the characteristics of the rural and urban areas and the nature of rural-urban linkages. In general, the beneficial forces are stronger for rural areas near urban cores, while the adverse flows dominate in regions more peripheral to the growing urban areas. Thus, backwash is more likely in rural areas outside of the rural-to-urban commuting zones.
The policy implications of backwash are that localities distant from urban growth centers will likely be adversely affected by regional economic-development policies that focus on innovation and entrepreneurial development in urban areas. These remote regions will need to devise economic-development programs that emphasize competitive advantages specific to their economies.
The idea of backwash originated in international-trade theory in a book by Gunner Myrdal (1957). Myrdal noted that an increase in exports from a region may stimulate capital and labor flows into the region to the detriment of the localities from which the resources came. Thomas Vietorisz and Bennett Harrison (1973) later proposed that spread and backwash feedbacks between labor markets contributed to a divergence of technology levels, labor productivity, and wages in these markets. Gary Gaile (1980) used backwash concepts to describe the potential negative effects of urban growth on peripheral areas.
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Rashid's Blog: A Place for Inquisitive Souls 