Exclusive discourses: leisure studies and disability

This article presents an outline of a thesis concerning the ways in which the discourse of leisure studies has become 'disabled by definition'. Through a failure to engage adequately with disability studies, disability politics and disabled people as both leisure participants and leisure theorists, the subject field of leisure studies has been unable to develop a coherent body of knowledge on disability and leisure. In effect, leisure studies' engagement with disability has been paralysed by its exclusive discourses, definitions and models drawn from the able-bodied, mobile and physically active worlds of work, recreation and physical education. These discourses, emanating from the 1960s disciplinary traditions of the sociology of work, geography of outdoor recreation and physical education, have prioritised discourses and definitions of the economically employed, independently mobile, physically able and conventionally aesthetic body, respectively. It is argued here that these three discourses have, in combination, shaped the body politic of leisure studies and a focus on social exclusion which is itself exclusive. In conclusion, the subject field of leisure studies now requires the development of a more inclusive discourse informed by new definitions of leisure and wider engagement with disability research and disabled people.