The recreation profession, capital, and democracy

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Abstract
It is contended that the recreation profession and its craft, recreation, have been ideological modus operandi in the interests of capital and that with the rise of commercial and corporate recreation, the recreation profession is moving from a supportive stance to one of corporate emulation. The evolution of the recreation profession from ideological cohort of capital to an emulator of capital is described as natural, yet masked, given the profession's philanthropic and public‐sector roots. The recreation movement and the industrial efficiency movement are both cast as similar ideological social reform movements that serve to obfuscate participatory democracy via the hybrid‐capitalist democracy. The practical and ideological metamorphosis the recreation profession must undergo to become an advocate of, and integral to, participatory democracy is explored. This metamorphosis is not novel but is a return to the profession's very subject matter in the classical meaning of the term leisure and in the older “idée” of the social sciences as public philosophy.

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