Young people's leisure activities and sociability - an ethnographic analysis

Abstract

Most sociology on young people has touched on the sociology of leisure activities. This article discusses some of the reasons for this persistent, traditional interest on the part of sociologists in young people's leisure activities and for some controversial trends in theory arising from this, e.g. the tendency to consider young people's leisure activities as marginal to the dominant culture typical of older generations. As far as this first tendency is concerned, the author considers that the most appropriate way of contradicting it is to try to destroy the myth of «homogeneous youth» in the field in which it is most firmly established - leisure. With regard to the second tendency mentioned above, the author proposes what he calls the «pagination method» which consists of bringing back to the «centre of the page» (of sociological discussion) the norms, values and cultural expression of young people which at present have been placed in the «margin». To discuss the controversial theoretic tendencies presented and to test the methods suggested, the author uses an ethnographic analysis of some of the cultural practices of young people in different social milieux, with emphasis on the morphological similarities and the substantive differences in young people's leisure activities.