Guest Editors:
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- Bruce Erickson (University of Manitoba)
- Dan Henhawk (University of Manitoba)
- Heather Mair (University of Waterloo)
We are inviting abstracts for a special issue of Leisure Studies that examines the relationship between Leisure, Justice and Climate Change. Abstracts are due May 31st, 2024 sent directly to Bruce Erickson (bruce.erickson@umanitoba.ca). Accepted papers will be due October 1st, 2024.
This special issue will provide an opportunity to explore the critical research and pedagogical possibilities for leisure in a time of climate change. Papers are solicited that will:
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- Explore how leisure, as a foundational dimension of modern life, is tied up in the conditions that have brought about the changing climate, including intensive resource use, colonial dispossession and cultural genocide, structural racism, individualism, ever-increasing consumption, and alienation from the non-human world.
- Detail the uneven experiences and exposures to climate that are often built upon racial, class, gender and sexual divisions as they are intertwined with the field of leisure.
- Address the promise of leisure as an avenue for understanding, teaching, and responding to climate change and its associated inequalities.
- Investigate the role of leisure studies in addressing climate change, including the theoretical and pedagogical avenues required within the discipline to adequately and justly respond to climate change.
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Papers in this special issue will draw from a deeply critical approach; they will work against quickfix solutions that often reproduce contemporary power asymmetries. This critical approach will endeavour to confront the structural forces that have put us in this situation. We encourage papers that are working on topics and settings beyond the western academy and from scholars that identify as members of historically, persistently and/or systemically marginalized communities.
Within leisure studies, there has been attention paid to how leisure experiences, especially in sensitive environments, are being impacted by climate change, often with a focus on individual behaviour or mitigation strategies. While there is a growing literature in these areas, the field of leisure studies is only just starting to consider the radical impact that climate change has on all dimensions of our leisure lives. This gap in the literature is starting to be addressed through work that places leisure as a central sphere through which we need to understand climate change. For example, Mair (2022) highlights the relationship between leisure, waste and disposability in leisure, arguing for a critical look at the very notion of waste and disposability that underpins the material production and provision of leisure. This reflects a developing literature that uses the lens of leisure to reshape our relationship and responsibility to nature (Erickson, 2011; Mansfield & Wheaton, 2011; Grimwood et al., 2023; Rose & Car 2018; Theriault & Mowatt, 2020). Threads in this dialogue point to the importance of decolonizing approaches to both leisure and nature. Henhawk and Norman (2019), in this vein, outline the potential of Indigenous relational ways of knowing and being that could challenge how we think about leisure and human engagement with the land.
This developing trend parallels a prominent and growing scholarship investigating the ways climate change has uneven impacts throughout the world. Research in the field of climate justice and political ecology addresses how we understand the structural forces shaping human and nonhuman responses to the climate emergency. Drawing from concerns for environmental justice and Indigenous self-determination, this research is led by activists and scholars who challenge the universality promoted by dominant or mainstream climate change research. In colonial contexts, this scholarship points out the devastating role that settler colonialism has had on the production of both climate change and the uneven distribution of its impacts. Indigenous communities have responded to these inequalities by spearheading the resurgence of traditions (especially through land-based education programs) and the production of new relationships that provide pathways forward through a changing climate (Callison, 2021; Johnson et. al., 2021; McGregor et al., 2020; Nursey-Bray et. al., 2021; Young, 2020).
This special issue is built upon the belief that there is a fruitful connection between concerns for justice within climate change and the field of leisure studies itself. Indeed, within leisure studies, there is a long tradition of research and activism that sees justice and equity as necessary vectors for understanding leisure experiences. This scholarship illustrates how structural inequalities shape the availability and outcomes of leisure opportunities. It recognizes the important work done by members of marginalized communities to address these issues and makes clear that many groups use leisure as a sphere in which they can achieve their social justice aims. Leisure studies, this tradition shows, is a productive realm for addressing equity issues at both a theoretical and practical level. This special issue will aim to bring that promise to the analysis of the longstanding impacts and future disruptions of climate change.
References
Erickson, B. (2011). Recreational activism: Politics, nature, and the rise of neoliberalism. Leisure Studies, 30(4), 477–494. https://doi.org/10.1080/02614367.2011.594078
Grimwood, B. S. R., Lopez, K. J., Leighton, J., & Stevens, Z. (2023). Practices of Gratitude and Outdoor Leisure. Leisure Sciences, 0(0), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/01490400.2023.2206394
Henhawk, D.A. & Norman, R. (2020). Indigenous Peoples, sport & sustainability. In R. Millington, & S. C. Darnell (Eds.), Sport, Development and Environmental Sustainability (pp.163-177). New York: Routledge.
Mair, H. (2022). Wasted: Towards a critical research agenda for disposability in leisure. Leisure Studies, 0(0), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1080/02614367.2022.2148718
Mansfield, L., & Wheaton, B. (2011). Leisure and the politics of the environment. Leisure Studies, 30(4), 383–386. https://doi.org/10.1080/02614367.2011.626916
Rose, J., & Carr, A. (2018). Political ecologies of leisure: A critical approach to nature-society relations in leisure studies. Annals of Leisure Research, 21(3), 265–283. https://doi.org/10.1080/11745398.2018.1428110
Theriault, D., & Mowatt, R. A. (2020). Both Sides Now: Transgression and Oppression in African Americans’ Historical Relationships with Nature. Leisure Sciences, 42(1), 15–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/01490400.2018.1448024
