A collection of critical essays which reject the assumptions that leisure relations are relations of freedom, self determination, life satisfaction and growth. The essays look at power and policy issues in leisure relations and attempt to produce a critical sociology of the subject.

Part 1 Theoretical perspectives on leisure: models of work, models of leisure, H.F.Moorhouse; the figurational approach to leisure and sport, E.Dunning; Sigmund Freud and the pursuit of pleasure, H.Ferguson; Simmel and leisure, D. Frisby; leisure and "the ruins of the bourgeois world", C.Rojek. Part 2 Leisure, power and planning: leisure policy - an unresolvable dualism?, F.Coalter; the promise and problems of women's leisure and sport, J.Hargreaves; leisure and the informal economy, J.Bishop and P.Hoggett; drugs and leisure, prohibition and pleasure - from subculture to the drugalogue, N.Dorn and N.South; leisure time and leisure space, C.Rojek.