Leisure studies and interpretive social inquiry

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Abstract
Empirically based research methods have been dominant in leisure studies' development, particularly in the social psychological study of leisure. Inadequate attention has been given to the epistemology underlying these methods. The empiricist rejection of questions about values and meanings, based on the unspoken influence of logical positivist epistemology, impoverishes the study of leisure and indeed separates leisure inquiry from the phenomena it wishes to study. Through criticism of Neulinger's perceptual model of leisure and more directly of Iso-Ahola's extension of that model through the concept of optimal arousal, the shortcomings of empiricism are demonstrated and an interpretive alternative suggested. This alternative, hermeneutically-based depth interpretation more fully acknowledges the intersubjective creation of social meaning and the indeterminacy of the social world in which this occurs. Depth interpretation allows greater acknowledgement of human involvement in creating the social world and of the importance attached to establishing meaning in it.

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