Sex and shunting

Abstract

This article applies the concept of ‘serious leisure’ to the subject of tourism development. It focuses upon the creation of counter cultures and alternative lifestyles, and the nature of the voluntarism that often is an extension of this. The case studies deal with the tourist railway volunteer and the ‘swinger’ lifestyle. The analysis also considers the creation of ‘an embodied space’ by the participant, since we are not dealing with passive consumption, but a proactive experience. In the case of railway preservation, the ‘embodied lifestyle’ has come to an accommodation with the tourism industry, generating a multi-million pound industry in the process. The embodiment of a ‘swinging lifestyle’ takes the traditional elements of the tourist experience and refashions them into a new formation or packages for their own forms of consumption. In both cases, the industry benefits from the economic results but knows practically nothing of the wellspring of these phenomena.