Legitimacy in public recreation: examining rhetorical shifts in institutional creation and maintenance

Abstract

This paper uncovers the rhetorical strategies used by the National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA) to affect institutional discourse and field logics during the first 25 years of its existence (1965–1990). Analysing editorials featured in the organization’s flagship publication, Parks & Recreation, we describe how the NRPA sought to establish itself as the legitimate steward of public recreation, sport, and leisure in the United States by utilizing five rhetorical approaches: normalization, rationalization, moralization, authorization and anti-authorization. Furthermore, we identify discrete patterns and combinations of strategies that have thus far not been described in the literature. Our research adds to prior sport-related institutional work scholarship, which has examined the importance of legitimacy in attempting to establish alternative modes of organizing and functioning in a field dominated by powerful incumbents, by offering an alternative look at the ‘starting-from-scratch’ establishment of a unified field logic.