Leisure activism andengaged ethnography: heterogeneous voices and the urban palimpsest

Abstract

Studying the conflictualities between leisure activism, understood as participation in events of dissent as a nonwork-based activity, and those tasked with 'maintaining order', requires techniques that can work with diverse voices and contesting world views. However, many of the methods familiar to us in the social sciences risk reinforcing relationships of power that can undermine such inquiry. Drawing on the conceptual work of scholars from the global south and the global north, we examine approaches to protests as event, the construction of urban space and the performativity of violence, in two democracies: Brazil and the UK.From that we were led to conclude such research requires a less canonical approach. It is through the adoption of a more engaged ethnography, one that establishes horizontal relations between researchers and participants that are drawn from backgrounds reflecting such conflictualities, combined with an understanding of the process of research as more like that of an event, that the diversity of the heterogeneous voices associated with dissent, within an urban palimpsest, can be heard.

The emerging civil society. Governing through leisure activism in Milan

“…The variety of urban initiatives it produces illustrates how NCS features leisure activism in specific terms, only partially recalling previous discussions of the topic (Lamond et al, 2020). It is not an example of political activism openly adopting leisure to pursue its objectives, but rather a form of animation of and commitment to an urban space that widely relies on leisure initiatives as devices for building and reproducing a sense of local belonging and identity.…”

Leisure, activism, and the animation of the urban environment

“…Finally, exploring the theme of whose voices are excluded from 'public' space, the paper by Lamond et al (2020) sets out to develop a research approach that can embrace the diversity of voices associated with leisure activism, and the animating of the city. Acknowledging the challenges that researchers face when trying to grasp the multiplicity of voices associated with leisure activism, the authors confront some of the many difficulties in investigating events of dissent within the city.…”