The Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies and the Hallman Lecture Series are proud to present the Shaw-Mannell Leisure Research Award and Hallman Lecture featuring 2020 recipient, Rasul Mowatt.
The award recognizes international career contributions to the study of leisure, broadly defined, and influence on leisure scholarship at the University of Waterloo. The award is named in honour of retired faculty members Sue Shaw and Roger Mannell to recognize their outstanding individual career achievements.
Geographies of Threat, Cities of Violence
Based on a current book project, Geographies of Threat, Cities of Violence, this talk frames the historical origins of the colonial city as the basis for the creation of Society and as the method of articulation of State power.
Thus, notions of the public park and plaza are situated as extensions of Marx’s enclosures and not the commons; aspects of tourism and events are used for Nemser’s congregation and not patterns of mobility; disability and athleticism are but practices of Puar’s right to maim and not areas for treatment and sport; and, outdoor landscapes and public lands are spaces of Harvey’s dispossession and extraction and not locations for experience and adventure.
There is no leisure-work dichotomy, because they are both tools for subjugation.
Worldwide, the year of 2020 gave us a window into the ways that the State invokes Seigel’s violence work on to a populace for social control and that same populace responding with Colver’s articulation of the riot, the blockade, the barricade, the occupation, and the commune.
The city is the site for the State and the creation of a society is only allowable through State approval, thus leisure is of the making of the State despite our (mis)perceptions of independence and freedom.
So, in pursuing an emancipatory direction in an understanding of leisure it is of the utmost importance to adopt a Gilmore’s moral and political imagination of what we conceive of as public space and the leisure that occurs in it.
Professor Rasul Mowatt
- Professor and former chair of the Department of Recreation, Park, and Tourism Studies at Indiana University Bloomington
- President of The Academy of Leisure Sciences
- Leader of the charge on anti-racism actions with eight worldwide leisure associations: The Academy of Leisure Sciences (TALS), The Australian and New Zealand Association of Leisure Studies (ANZALS), The Canadian Association for Leisure Studies (CALS), Leisure and Recreation Association of South Africa (LARASA), The Leisure Studies Association (LSA), World Leisure Organization (WLO), Academy of Leisure Sciences Africa, and Association for Events Management Education (AEME)
- Academic interests are strongly centred on critiquing society for issues that are most prevalent in impacting quality of life.
- At the forefront of the leisure fields efforts to critically engage notions of race and social justice.
- Published broadly across American Behavioral Scientist, Loisir et Société/Society and Leisure, Annals of Tourism Research, Journal of Leisure Research, Therapeutic Recreation Journal, Recreation Sport Journal, and Tourism Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Journal as well as in other fields
Lecture and award presentation will take place 1:00 - 2:30 p.m. Please register to obtain a link to the virtual lecture. The lecture will be recorded, and the recording posted on this page following the lecture. Update - unfortunately the lecture was not recorded. Our apologies.