Entrepreneurship und Tourismus

Sociology of leisure is one of the central disciplines of leisure sciences. It is concerned with the analysis and systematic research of the entirety of leisure-related manifestations, its consequences and marginal conditions (Freericks et al., 2010). As a ‘spectrum discipline’, sociology of leisure is considered both a subfield of sociology and a key concept of the wider discipline itself, being tangent to all areas of human life (Prahl, 2002). A focus on gender, family status, number of children, age, interests etc. results in fields of research whose common denominator – on the macro level – is the ‘leisure society’. The instances of mediation between the individual and society are analysed on the meso and micro level, as is the leisure behaviour of individuals and groups thereof (Prahl, 2002). Further distinctions are made in terms of the setting – for example, tourism behaviour in a hotel or destination, recess design in schools, or activities in a retirement home are all objects of interest for the sociology of leisure.

1. Leisure and work – symbiotic dichotomy?

Leisure provides the temporal foundation and timeframe for many activities and tasks, dominated by ‘being free to do…...