Serious Leisure

Serious leisure was coined by sociologist Robert Stebbins to describe when people enjoy something so much with their free time that they will dedicate their vacations and even shape their work around it. I found this theory to tie closely to my information community of film meme data collectors. This theory was born from the study of how people from different occupations categorized and spent their vacation time. Considering socioeconomic background, cultural and social norms, and geography; when given the opportunity, most people did enjoy getting away and spending that time doing something that was a concentrated hobby, like sports or skilled activity like puzzles or reading. Serious leisure could be described as time spent on an activity with a beginning and an end that created joy for the participant.  

Focusing Stebbin’s work solely on film, he wrote, “More circumscribed is the benefit of learning something in an enjoyable setting that could stay with the participant well beyond the visit to that setting, even while no commitment to a serious pursuit result from the experience” (Stebbins, 2015, p. 21). In this research paper, he delved into edutainment, or rather, the pursuit of hobbies that teach us something and fulfill us without it having to be actual work. He concentrated on leisure reading, zoos and festivals, and biographies on television. The common thread with these serious leisure activities was it having a grail quest. There is something adventurous in these leisure activities that draws people, and in participating in them, whether it is watching a movie or reading a book, you are encompassing yourself in that world and it is fulfilling you. The preservation of film takes this educational belief and elevates it to fulfilling leisure and work. If the consumption of movies and books is leisure, then the manipulation of said materials to convey our own opinions is actual work, then serious leisure has just been elevated to a serious profession.  

In Hartel’s research, she directly tied serious leisure to LIS work and academic endeavors. “It enables engagement with human subjects who are often passionate, skilled, and thoughtful about their chosen pursuits. More practically speaking, a serious leisure research program may benefit LIS information provision, education, and public identity” (Hartel, 2016, p. 236). Any library staff worker in a public library can tell you that the foot traffic is the heaviest around films and music. It is a medium that is easily consumable – unlike books, there are no levels to how a film is viewed or enjoyed. As a film meme data collector, you’re archiving, if not the actual film, then artifacts that are related to the making of that film. Those pieces can be viewed differently by everyone depending on how they consumed the movie. Donald Draper’s coat from Mad Men hangs in the Smithsonian. Some people will look at that jacket and remember the sheer size of Jon Hamm, others will look at the jacket and remember what he did during the episode in which it was featured. The same garment seen by different people leisurely watching the same show. That is how serious leisure ties into data collection.  

Using the research work of Anders Hektor, Hartel talked about the four general modes of information behavior.  

The four modes are giving, seeking, communicating, and gathering. The breakdown of how information is consumed and shared shows it in a human context. (Hartel, 2003, pp. 5-6). The goal was to understand the information activities of people that pursued serious leisure. With all the studies that were conducted around serious leisure and its use in LIS, it always came back to how people tick, meaning, the research always looked for why people chose what they did and then examined how they expressed and explained that activity to others. As if we were watching a movie together and trying to figure out the meaning by the end.  

Staying with the thought of why people choose the leisure activities they do, we can look at why a film is made. Film theorists dissect why a writer or director chose to go in a certain direction for a film. The answer will always be up to interpretation, so a piece of the puzzle could be data collection. Personal interpretation is the groundwork for research of the behaviors of that time. If celluloid is forever, then what is captured on it will always be there to be consumed, interpreted, and presented to others.  

References 

Hartel, J., Cox, A.M. & Griffin, B.L. (2016). Information activity in serious leisure. Information  

Research, 21(4). Retrieved from http://InformationR.net/ir/21-4/paper728.html  

Hartel, J., (2003). The serious leisure frontier in library and information science. Knowl.org  

30(3/4). Pp. 228-238. https://doi.org/10.5771/0943-7444-2003-3-4-228 

Stebbins, B., (2015 June 11). Leisure reflections 39: On edutainment as serious hedonism.  Leisure Studies Association. https://leisurestudiesblog.wordpress.com/2015/06/11/on-edutainment-as-serious-hedonism/