The discipline of leisure : embodying cultures of 'recreation' /

This collection of anthropological essays on leisure comprises nine ethnographic studies that examine how men and women use free time in their daily lives. The essays deal primarily with specific bodily practices associated with sports and hobbies--which is to say, the contributors look at the body as a site of identity formation, experience, and disciplined recreation and try to see how rituals, sports, and forms of bodily transformation mediate between modern-day ideologies of freedom, choice, and self control. Subjects examined include bodybuilding, "muscular Christianity," adventure travel (i.e., kayaking in New Zealand), a vacation in Mallorca, animal and human bodies in English foxhunting, the role of sport in promoting Canadian identity among young immigrants, the "genuineness" of a tourist's experiences in Cuba, sociability in colonial Cairo, and the influence of martial arts in participants beyond the mat. Colemen (Univ. of Sussex, UK) and Kohn (Univ. of Melbourne) provide a theoretical introduction in which they try to contextualize the contributions, but it is difficult to follow. Summing Up: Recommended. With reservations. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, researchers. S. A. Riess Northeastern Illinois University