Looking back at leisure: an abridged version of ‘the growth of many leisures? Three decades of leisure studies 1982–2011’
Abstract In the summer of 2014, Professor Mike Collins – one of the four founding members of the Leisure Studies (LS) Association – submitted a paper to LS that offered a retrospective review of the first 30 years of the journal (1982–2012). Sadly, whilst the paper was under review, Professor Collins passed away. Mike’s commentaries have always been significant; we include this piece in this particular issue of the journal because it underpins the range of articles we have selected that we feel address some of the central tenets of ‘leisure’. Held alongside the Editors introduction, this article speaks as much as anything else to the state of the field, its futures and its potentialities. Serving as a companion piece that looks to the multiple pasts, genealogies and histories of leisure (and indeed LS), we, the Editors, offer below a necessarily abridged and posthumous version of Professor Collins’ original submission to the journal. Any omissions, errors, mis-representations and mis-understandings are the result of our own editorial hand for which we unreservedly apologise. We hope we have been able to keep the spirit, critique and engaging style that, no doubt, Mike would have presented in a final version of this manuscript.