Award recipient uses interactionism to understand leisure behavior - John R. Kelly, recreation and park researcher, winner of the Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt Award for Excellence in Research - includes list of references - Research Update

The Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt Award for Excellence in Research is given annually to the individual whose contribution to recreation and park research has advanced the cause of the recreation movement significantly. The recipient also must show dedication to the field that parallels the dedication and zeal exemplified by the two former U.S. Presidents for whom the award is named.

The 1994 Roosevelt Award winner, John R. Kelly, is a professor in the Department of Leisure Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Without a doubt, he has been one of the most productive scholars the field of leisure studies has ever seen. Using sociology as a discipline base, he has explored the various meanings of leisure in people's lives. His research has included topics related to the philosophy of leisure, family leisure, aging, and recreation trends. A summary of his 20 years of scholarship provides insights about how research helps us understand leisure behavior in new and expanding ways.

Kelly has authored nine published books - with one currently in preparation - and nearly 100 chapters and journal articles. Few students in North American universities complete their academic careers without encountering at least one of Kelly's works: Leisure, an introduction to leisure studies (Prentice-Hall, 1982); Leisure Identities and Interactions, a study of personal development and expression through the life course (Allen and Unwin, 1983); Recreation Business, an introduction to market-sector leisure provisions (MacMillan, 1984); Freedom to Be: A New Sociology of Leisure, a critical analysis of theory and research (MacMillan, 1986); Peoria Winter: Styles and Resources in Later Life, a study of coping with later-life change, funded by the National Institute on Aging (Lexington Books, The Free Press, 1987); Recreation Trends toward the Year 2000, an analysis of participation in recreation activities (Sagamore Press, 1987); Leisure (second edition) (Prentice-Hall, 1990); The Sociology of Leisure with G. Godbey (Venture Publishing, 1992); Activity and Aging (Ed.) (Sage, 1994); and Leisure (third edition) (Allyn and Bacon, in preparation).

A varied background has served as a basis for Dr. Kelly's scholarship. He received a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Monmouth College in 1951. He went on to earn Master's degrees in theology from Yale University, in social ethics from the University of Southern California, and in Sociology from the University of Oregon. He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Oregon. And he has been on the University of Illinois faculty since 1975.

Not only has Dr. Kelly's work influenced students, researchers, and practitioners in North America, he also has been a keynote speaker at conferences around the world, from Europe and Brazil to Japan and Australia. He was the founding chair of the Commission on Research of the World Leisure and Recreation Association (WLRA) from 1981 to 1988. He is a member of the Academy of Leisure Sciences, a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America, and current chair of the Academic Commission of the WLRA International Centre of Excellence, a graduate study program located in the Netherlands.

What We Have Learned

from Kelly

The primary contribution Dr. Kelly has made to our field is in offering a deeper understanding of the meaning of leisure. In the course of over 20 years of research, he has offered numerous insights into this phenomenon called leisure. In Freedom to Be: Toward a New Sociology of Leisure (1986), Dr. Kelly examined how research questions about leisure behavior can be viewed within different sociological traditions. He showed how the symbolic interactionist perspective is particularly useful.

Although Dr. Kelly (1986; 1994) argues that symbolic interaction is not the only way to understand leisure, he has used it to present an alternative to structural-functional sociological approaches that fail to clarify the meaning of leisure in people's lives fully. Symbolic interaction examines the situated meanings of (leisure) behavior. Dr. Kelly is best known for his examination of how leisure identity provides a link between people's personal and the social worlds. In Leisure Identities and Interactions (1983) he examined how the family, life course, and social interaction all are used in constructing symbolic fines of action. Symbolic interaction provides a way to understand how leisure is constructed by individuals in relation to gender, age, family relations, and work life. His frameworks have been used by other researchers interested in understanding the meaning and construction of leisure related to how individuals interact in social situations.

A Common Thread

A thread that runs through all of Dr. Kelly's research is that leisure is a central element in being human. He describes the identities that people assume because of their leisure, as well as the space that leisure provides for a variety of interactions. Through his research (e.g., Kelly and Kelly, 1994), he has concluded that leisure is not peripheral or separate from the rest of life's meanings and relationships. He describes leisure as learned behavior that may be crucial to our personal and social development and to the way we define ourselves and the world around us. Leisure is a part of our culture and the social contexts in which we define ourselves. Dr. Kelly (1982) suggests further that we have to examine more than activities if we are to understand the significance of leisure in contemporary life.

Almost all of us have struggled from time to time with ourselves, students, and citizens at large about the definitions of leisure. Leisure is a complicated concept to define, yet operationalizing our research and the understanding of our services depends on definitions if our work is to be seen as relevant and significant.

In his introductory texts, Dr. Kelly articulated three approaches that can be used for viewing leisure: time, activity, and experience. (Kelly, 1982) This framework provides a straightforward - but not oversimplified - way of understanding the context of leisure. Most people readily can relate to these approaches. The trilogy has been useful in teaching and understanding the phenomenon of leisure, particularly for people without academic training in our field.

Family leisure has been a particularly prominent topic in much of Dr. Kelly's work. In a recent article, he (1993) described some of the current controversies about family leisure, many of which have emerged from his research over a period of time. For example, he suggests that there is no one concept of "the family." Issues based on social class, ethnicity, and sexual diversity relate to how families and leisure are viewed. Dr. Kelly also has clearly acknowledged the role gender plays in the family. He suggests that gender either may be a constraint or an opportunity. In his work in the past five years, Dr. Kelly has articulated the imperative to consider gender in any analysis of leisure behavior. He has contributed particularly to the understanding of how families represent the "lived experience" of individuals. He also suggests that the sociology of one's family or group membership may relate to characteristics such as age, class, race, and other social factors which are cumulative and interactive (Kelly and Kelly, 1994). Dr. Kelly also has examined the difficulty in separating leisure from work and family roles. Leisure has some unique characteristics, but he shows that it is linked closely with all aspects of family and work life.

Focus on Aging

Describing Dr. Kelly's work without examining his focus on aging would be incomplete. He has given new life to questions such as "Are some leisure activities better than others at different times in the life course?" He has been critical of the way that "active" is defined in terms of subjective well-being. Further, he has given theoretical support to the understanding of how leisure activities contribute to life satisfaction (Kelly & Ross, 1989). He and his associates have coined the term "high investment" activities and provided empirical evidence that these activities, which are developed over time and require effort and the acquisition of skill, most likely yield outcomes of an enhanced sense of competence and worth. Dr. Kelly recently edited Activity and Aging, which provides an interdisciplinary collection of material that brings leisure and aging to the attention of people in other fields.

Dr. Kelly has been able to develop these interpretations thanks to his ability to listen to people talk about their leisure and to interpret and make sense of those meanings, using various research methods including interviews and surveys. He concluded in his recent article on family (Kelly, 1993) that "we need more case studies that go into the real contexts of life and the real conditions of the family rather than treat social variables as digits in a computer" (p. 9).

Following the Yellow

Brick Road

Summarizing the meaning of an individual's life work is not always easy. Clearly, Dr. Kelly's contributions to the field of leisure studies reflect a lifelong calling and a number of legacies remain. For those of us who are researchers and/or work with students, "the beat goes on" as Dr. Kelly's work is used again and again by students and scholars. Although as a sociologist Dr. Kelly has talked little about his work applied directly to practice, his many findings and interpretations provide a solid justification for leisure services.

The implications of Dr. Kelly's research are clear in establishing that people find a myriad of meanings in the context of leisure and that leisure cannot be separated from other aspects of life. This interactive approach is one that likely will provide future theoretical insights as well as further evidence for the way that leisure contributes to quality of life. Dr. John "Jack" Kelly has provided a foundation for following this particular "yellow brick road" to a greater understanding of the land of leisure.

References

Kelly, J.R. (1982). Leisure. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Kelly, J.R. (1983) Leisure Identities and Interactions. London: Allen and Unwin. Kelly, J.R. (1984). Recreation Business. New York: Macmillan. Kelly, J.R. (1986). Freedom to Be: A New Sociology of Leisure. New York: Macmillan. Kelly, J. R. (1987). Peoria Winter: Styles and Resources in Later Life. New York: The Free Press. Kelly, J.R. (1987). Recreation Trends Toward the Year 2000. Champaign, IL: Sagamore. Kelly, J.R. (1990). Leisure (second edition). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Kelly, J.R., & Godbey, G. (1990). The Sociology of Leisure. State College, PA: Venture Kelly, J.R. (Ed.) (1994). Activity and Aging. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Kelly, J.R. (in preparation) Leisure (third edition). Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Kelly, J.R. (1993). Leisure-family research: Old and new issues. World Leisure and Recreation, 35(3), 5-9. Kelly, J. R. (1994). The symbolic interaction metaphor and leisure: Critical challenges. Leisure Studies, 13,81-96. Kelly, J.R., & Ross, J. (1989). Later-life leisure: Beginning a new agenda. Leisure Sciences, 11(1), 47-59. Kelly, J.R., & Kelly, J.R. (1994). Multiple dimensions of meaning in the domains of work, family, and leisure. Journal of Leisure Research, 26(3), 250-274.

Dr Karla Henderson is a professor in the curriculum in Leisure Studies and Recreation Administration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr Kleiber is professor and chair in the Department of Recreation and Leisure at the University of Georgia.

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