Baywatch babes as recreation workers
Subtitle: lifeguarding, subjectivity, equity
By: by Marie Annette Vander Kloet.
Published: 2005
Language: eng
Number of pages: 149
Subjects: Lifeguards.; Leisure -- Social aspects.; Recreation -- Social aspects.; Subjectivity.; Discrimination in employment.; Homophobia.
Description: This work explores lifeguarding, subjectivity, equity and the provision of public leisure. In this qualitative study informed by feminist post-structuralism, I analyze interviews with 11 lifeguards who have worked in public recreation. My examination focused first on the discourses which produce lifeguard subjectivity, notably middle class values, meritocracy, the lifeguard shortage and the invisibility of gender, whiteness and heterosexuality. Interrogating these discourses makes evident their impact on the provision of public leisure. Public leisure is affected in myriad ways by racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, heterosexism and ableism embedded in the discourses which produce lifeguard subjectivity. Looking into these discourses and their effect on public leisure makes clear both the barriers to and the dire need for social change in lifeguarding. In linking my analysis to pragmatic work in aquatics, strategies for change in workplaces and lifesaving societies are developed.
Notes: Thesis (M.A.)--University of Toronto, 2005.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 131-142)

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