Serious Leisure: A Conceptual Statement

Many social scientists believe the future will offer significantly fewer opportunities for most adults to gain and maintain a job in the way they are used to doing today. A smaller number of jobs and a substantially reduced number of work hours are in store for many employees in the postindustrial society. Whether or not their jobs ever provided such things, they will increasingly be searching the world of leisure for ways to express their abilities, fulfill their potential, and identify themselves as unique human beings. Serious leisure is a main route open to people with these goals. Its three types—amateurism, hobbyist pursuits, and career volunteering—are defined, described, and interrelated. They are contrasted throughout with unserious or casual leisure, on the one hand, and work, on the other. The intermediate position of serious leisure between these two extremes relegates its current participants to the status of marginal men and women of leisure.