Local justice and public sector leisure policy

Abstract

In the leisure theory literature, local authority leisure services and professionals are frequently criticised as being inequitable in terms of service allocation. The aim of this paper is to extend the idea of leisure as a profession in the light of contrasted political conceptions of justice. We interrogate the problematic notion of social justice in resource allocation decisions made by leisure professionals in public organizations. We present an alternative exploration of equity as a function of indeterminate principles of justice. We also consider the heuristic value of ‘local justice’ (Elster, 1992) as a means to better characterizing variable service allocations in public sector leisure. The idea of local justice provides a framework for the analysis of how different institutional sectors allocate their benefits and burdens through substantively different principles of allocation. Whilst Elster focuses on the three arenas of health, education and work to support his thesis, we consider the potential of ‘local justice’ to illuminate and justify why and how local authorities differentially allocate their leisure services. First, the idea of ‘leisure services’ is evaluated in relation to local justice based on the characteristics of scarcity, indivisibility and homogeneity. Secondly, we adapt Elster's framework to interpret the merits of different allocative practices for leisure. In particular, we focus on the relations between leisure professionals' understandings of the nature of leisure services and the principles for their just allocation and distribution in contrast to that of the general public or what are referred to as ‘common understandings’. Finally, the implications of ‘local justice’ for local authority leisure services and professionals are considered.