Leisure in Later Life

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This book analyses leisure choice as a complex concept, made more complicated

in later life than at any other time. The author posits that there are many

unanswered questions about the new booming generation of healthy, older

people, and this book asks what it is really like to be old at the beginning of the

21st century in the United Kingdom, analysing leisure in older people in the

context of the subtle politics of the day to day.

Throughout the chapters, the author highlights the often missing depictions of

older people who enjoy and enact bold, informed agency as part of their everyday

lives. Drawing upon secondary data from the Mass Observation Archive, a social

thesis of leisure and ageing emerges that challenges the individualism inherent in

‘active ageing.’ It is proposed that the idea of ‘active ageing’ creates complex

constraints to leisure as people strive to measure up to cultural expectations. The

stories in this book advocate for an appreciation and re-evaluation of passive

leisure in later life, and the enjoyment and freedom it can bring.

The project is therefore useful to students and researchers of leisure studies,

gerontology and sociology of ageing.