Guest Editors
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- Bonnie Pang, University of Bath | bp620@bath.ac.uk
- Janelle Joseph, Brock University | janelle.joseph@brocku.ca
- Thomas Fletcher, Leeds Beckett University | T.E.Fletcher@leedsbeckett.ac.uk
The central scope of relevance to this Special Issue is the empirical knowledge of diaspora research within Sociology of Leisure. Decades of research have presented us a panoramic and penetrating picture of a range of diasporic communities (e.g., Chinese, African, Muslim, Polish, Vietnamese, Indian) in terms of their origin, motivation, and distribution; their struggles for surviving and thriving in the face of discrimination, antagonism, and xenophobia in white dominant societies; as well as their identity work in modern, multicultural social spaces. Yet, members of the diasporas and their experiences in leisure research remains limited.
In the last decades, critical scholars have argued that the cultural imagination of Sociology of Leisure is too narrow in its research focus, theorisations, and implications, based on a Euro-American centric understanding of the world, created by the North and disregarding Indigenous, LGBTQ and other forms of knowledge coming from the Global South. This special issue is keen to include contributions that engage with social experiences of leisure from the periphery, including those periphery knowledges in colonised “Global North” countries such as Canada, and Australia and New Zealand who are geographically South of the dateline yet can be understood as part of the global metropole that decentralises its Indigenous “Others”.
This Special Issue would allow interdisciplinary, international, and Global South scholars working in Sociology of Leisure to present research which explores the diverse and different aspects of the diasporic phenomenon. We further invite scholarly work that critically explore the concept of ‘diaspora’ within Sociology of Leisure research. ‘Diaspora’ is an enigma, with its attendant questions of cultural, racial, and social identification and affiliation, of lineage and identity, of story and memory, and indeed, of participation, representation, and socialisation in multicultural societies challenged by complex and difficult issues of diversity, inclusivity, culture, race, and citizenship. While diasporas would be a key theme of the Special Issue, it would encourage work that integrates digital and spatial dimensions. We welcome innovative research that explore the role of online networks and place/communities in leisure practices that would contribute new and original empirical and theoretical debates for this Special Issue.
In this context the Special Issue would have the scope to bring together papers which examine and theorise diasporas in leisure in relation to a range of exciting and original areas which include but are not confined to the following areas. We will encourage submissions from individuals at all stages of careers, including doctoral students and early career researchers.
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- Empirical accounts of diasporas in leisure as transformative experiences
- Diasporas family in leisure
- Media representations of diasporas in leisure
- Digital diasporas in leisure
- Leisure as spaces of in/exclusion for diasporic communities
- Leisure and diasporas health
- Indigenous/non-Euro-American centric theorisations on diasporas in leisure
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Submissions are in no way limited to the above points, but authors should refer to the above special edition statements when composing their articles.
