“A Cathartic Moment in a Man’s Life”: Homosociality and Gendered Fun on the Puttan Tour

Rarely addressed in academic scholarship, the puttan tour is a well-known form of entertainment in Italy where young men drive around in small groups with the aim of spotting street sex workers. On some occasions, the participants will approach the sex workers to strike up a conversation. On others, they will shout out insults from their car then drive away. This article aims to advance a detailed analysis of this underexplored cultural practice drawing on a diverse body of scholarship exploring the intersection of masculinity, leisure, and homosociality. By analyzing stories of puttan tours gathered mostly online, including written accounts and YouTube videos, our aim is to explore the appeal of the puttan tour through an analysis of how homosociality, humor, and laughter operate in this example of gendered fun. To this end, we look at the multiple and often equivocal meanings of this homosocial male-bonding ritual, its emotional and affective dynamics, and the ways in which it reproduces structures of inequality while normalizing violence against sex workers

Gender and leisure research: The "codification of knowledge"

This article is concerned with the interrelationships between gender, power, and knowledge in the construction of leisure theory. The article reviews a series of phases toward gender scholarship in leisure studies, comparing these models of chronological transformation with similar unilinear historical models from the sociology of education. International refereed journals from leisure and tourism studies are then analyzed as sites and processes of knowledge construction, legitimation, and reproduction. An audit of sex segregation in the authorship of 1,784 articles from a sample of six leisure and tourism journals revealed that, during the period 1982-1997 the ratio of male authors to female authors of refereed articles was four to one. Comparative research of journals in cognate subject fields identified a range of good practices in relation to promoting a more inclusive approach toward gender representation. None of these practices had been adopted by any of the leisure and tourism journals audited. The "codification of knowledge" is revealed as a product of both structural and cultural power, and, as such, a combination of material and discursive analysis is required to examine the sociocultural nexus of knowledge production, legitimation, and reproduction

Theorizing Other discourses of tourism, gender and culture: Can the subaltern speak (in tourism)?

At its broadest level, this article is concerned with identifying, reviewing and developing synergies between three subject fields that have experienced rapid growth over the last two decades: tourism studies, gender studies and wider cultural theory. At a more specific level, the article seeks to review the interface between structural and cultural power in the construction of gender relations and gendered Others in tourism. The article adopts and adapts poststructural and postcolonial feminist critiques that have placed emphasis on the symbolic, textual, discursive and performative construction of the Other. Seeing the Other person or people as merely subaltern in tourism is problematized when we listen to these poststructural and postcolonial feminist voices. These voices articulate discourses that speak of the complexity of tourism and gender relations. In doing so, however, these academic voices create yet further possibilities of representing Others and raise additional questions about authors, authority and the subaltern's speech. Thus, tourism, through its association with the exotic and erotic, is critiqued as a complex media, medium and mediator of symbolic and material power in the Othering of gender and culture as part of the fluid process of tourism and global consumption where issues of power and representation are continually tested and contested. © 2001, Sage Publications. All rights reserved

From Leisure and Disability to Disability Leisure: Developing data, definitions and discourses

Although both disability studies and leisure studies have grown to become influential subject fields in their own right, there has been little discursive exchange between the two fields. This article seeks to address these equally significant gaps in disability research within leisure studies and leisure research within duability studies. Empirical data examining the role of leisure in the lives of a group of young people with cerebral palsy are introduced to contextualise definitions and discourses of leisure and disability. The article demonstrates that, for many young disabled people, the role of leisure in tackling social exclusion remains within the realms of policy rhetoric, rather than everyday reality. The dissonance between these agendas and actualities is reviewed in relation to definitions and discourses of disability and leisure evident in wider social policies, and in relation to definitions, discourses and models of disability that remain dominant within leisure provision