Introduction: Leisure’s Legacy—Challenging the Common Sense View of Free Time

Abstract

Leisure suffers at the level of common sense from an unfortunate legacy: a combination of oversimplification, moral depreciation, and in some quarters, even lack of recognition. In other words, there is plenty of evidence to justify the central proposal in this book that the common sense view of free-time activities can and should be confronted. Why? Two answers to this question are that gatekeepers informed only by the common sense definitions of leisure while working in the institutions of higher education and funding agencies for research and teaching often fail to give research and education in leisure science its due. Moreover, the general population guided by certain common sense definitions suffers with its ignorance of how it could benefit from a more informed view of free time.