Decentring Work

How has it come to be that paid work is seen as the primary avenue for attaining sustenance, self-esteem, and human dignity?

This book encourages scholars and practitioners to rethink the relationships between leisure, social policy, and human development. Drawing on the expertise of some of the most innovative minds in the field of leisure studies from across Canada, Decentring Work questions how and why we have come to value paid employment as the marker of social success and individual self-worth and, more provocatively, investigates the role that leisure might play in its stead.

The contributors probe the dimensions of marginalization and oppression experienced by groups such as women living in poverty, Indigenous youth, new immigrants, and older adults and show how leisure can be a vital element in confronting issues in the social construction of homelessness, incarceration, dementia care, disability, and ethnicity. Using a mix of approaches from in-depth empirical studies to more conceptually driven discussions, the chapters in Decentring Work weave together effectively into a treatise on notions of work, leisure, power, and social change.

This collection is essential reading for anyone in the field of leisure studies, recreation, or social work who is interested in the role that leisure can and should play in reshaping human and community development.

Heather Mair is an associate professor in the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies at the University of Waterloo. She is co-author (with Donald G. Reid and E. Wanda George) of Rural Tourism Development: Localism and Cultural Change.

Susan M. Arai is an associate professor in the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies at the University of Waterloo. Her research examines concepts such as social inclusion/social exclusion, therapeutic relationships, empowerment, mindfulness, and health.

Donald G. Reid is a professor in the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development at the University of Guelph. He is the author of Work and Leisure in the 21st Century.

With Contributions By: Susan M. Arai, Heather Maier, Donald G. Reid, Don Dawson, Janna Taylor, Wendy Frisby, Leigh Golden, Leah Katerberg, Sherry L. Dupuis, Rishia Burke, Susan Tirone, Darla Fortune, Alison Pedlar, Felice Yuen, Dawn Trussel, Karen M. Fox, and Brett D. Lashua