The Messiness of Leisure Research

This book illustrates tensions, absences, and unresolved challenges experienced in research – experiences that are so often left out of the conventional, smooth, and linear discussion of research that generally appears in academic publications.

Laying bare the messy details of research is increasingly important because leisure scholars’ engagement in reflexive, collaborative, critical, arts-based, participative, and social justice-oriented research heightens the need to explore and examine significant moments that punctuate and undoubtedly shape both research and researchers. The chapters in this book make explicit the negotiations, contradictions, questions, doubts, and uncertainties often underlying research. As loose ends of the research process are unravelled, this book inspires researchers across disciplines to expand the ways we come to know and do research.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Leisure Sciences.