Freedom in the experience of leisure

Abstract

A popular claim in some leisure research is not only that perceived freedom is essential to leisure, but also that perceived freedom means free choice. This paper suggests that perceived freedom is indeed essential, but that reducing perceived freedom to whether or not a person chooses a leisure activity or pursuit unnecessarily shrinks the scope of the potential meaning of perceived freedom. Instead of settling for taking the freedom proper to leisure as a point of departure (free choice) or even as a point of arrival (outcome freedom), it is argued that freedom is lived through in the experience of leisure. This experiential freedom is characterized by a feeling of ongoing consent or cooperation and by the intensification of our ordinary experience. This intensification, in turn, is an enlarged sense of an experience rounded out in anticipation, realization, and recapitulation. Perceived freedom, consequently, becomes the experience of a playful dialogue between our ongoing consent and the elements of intensification.

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