Abstract
ABSTRACT International, elite level tournament bridge is a unique context for exploring the dynamics of serious leisure experience. This paper presents sociological research on participation and motivation in a dyadic serious pursuit, understood through the lens of the serious leisure perspective (SLP) and complementary approaches of social worlds and leisure experiences. Qualitative interviews with 52 elite bridge players from the USA and Europe, suggest that the rewards of winning, competition, thrill and flow are worthy of more consideration in the serious leisure perspective. Motivation and participation in elite bridge involve individual and interpersonal dynamics and agency whilst being shaped by wider structural constraints. The motivations of professionals and amateurs are contextually specific and shaped in relation to career contingencies and turning points. This elite social world illustrates that the serious pursuit category of the SLP can encompass both serious leisure amateurs and professional devotee workers. An exploration of the rewards, costs and constraints of elite bridge offers empirical insights that can inform a multi-paradigmatic approach to understanding complex leisure experience.
Highlights
This paper presents a sociological perspective on complex leisure experiences (Gallant et al 2013; Veal, 2017) by exploring participation in the social world of elite bridge and the motivations of elite players
As a card game that is always played in partnership, the unique social world of bridge adds to the limited empirical research on both dyadic leisure and devotee work
We summarise a model for understanding elite bridge, demonstrating why this case is useful for theorising serious leisure experience multiparadigmatically
Summary
This paper presents a sociological perspective on complex leisure experiences (Gallant et al 2013; Veal, 2017) by exploring participation in the social world of elite bridge and the motivations of elite players. Within the SLP elite bridge is a serious pursuit, but it encompasses both serious leisure and devotee work, challenging Stebbins The case study of elite bridge demonstrates that both amateurs and professionals can come together within the same leisure space, creating a combination of the SLP types: serious leisure and devotee work. Similar to Lee’s (2020), recent work, the paper indicates the ways that a social world perspective (SWP) extends the social aspects of the ‘unique ethos’ (Stebbins, 2020) of serious pursuits by considering the differences and conflicts that participants face as well as their shared experiences
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