This article argues that the post-war baby boomers led a long generation in which successive cohorts achieved, and came to expect, continuous improvement in living standards. The article proceeds to argue that current cohorts of young people in all Western countries will become the vanguard of a successor generation, distinguished by a different youth life stage and also by different characteristic experience of adulthood and, eventually, a different politics than the generation's predecessor. It is argued that the new generation's situation arose initially within the working classes and has now spread upwards. The article suggests that this new trend is unlikely to be reversed on account of (1) economic growth rates in Western countries slowing since the three decades that immediately followed the Second World War; (2) labour's declining share of gross domestic product and wider income inequalities within countries; (3) costs of imported commodities will most likely continue to rise; (4) new cohorts of workers will have to bear some of the costs of supporting swollen cohorts of retired citizens, tackling pollution and alleviating climate change; (5) the costs of raising children are likely to continue to rise and new cohorts of workers will most likely need to make some private provisions for their own health care and retirement incomes; (6) there are now excessive numbers of higher education graduates in all world regions relative to the number of graduate jobs; and (7) the changing class demography in West Europe and North America. The article concludes by considering possible outcomes which include intensified inter- and intra-generational conflict.

(2007). Youth Transitions and Generations: A Response to Wyn and Woodman. Journal of Youth Studies: Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 263-269.

This paper argues that by focusing on ‘little leisures’ (sport, tourism and so on, leisure that is serious or casual, or leisure that produces ‘flow’, or on the specifics of the leisure of selected socio‐demographic groups), leisure studies lose sight of the truly consequential outcomes from leisure. It is argued that explaining the ways in which leisure as a whole has grown, and has not grown, and also the relative freedom of individuals to choose how to use their leisure time and money, becomes possible only when we recognise that performing what in reality are leisure's main societal functions (enhancing well‐being, maintaining consumer demand and expressing identities) are conditional on most of the details of people's leisure choices being relatively inconsequential.

This paper uses political generations theory to examine the main youth mobilisations during and since the twentieth century: pre-1939 fascist and communist movements; the student movements of the 1960s and 70s; movements that challenged colonial and neo-colonial rulers in less developed countries and young people's involvement in the revolutions that saw the end of communism in East-Central and South-East Europe in 1989. Conclusions from this review of the past are used in considering the likely significance of subsequent outbursts of political activism among young people: the ‘colour revolutions’ and other instances of youth mobilisation in former Soviet republics and other ex-communist countries; the Arab Spring and the series of movements that have challenged neo-liberalism – Anti-Globalisation, the Indignados and the Occupy movements. The paper notes that youth mobilisations that have led to the formation of new political generations that have changed their countries' politics then transformed the countries have typically extended over several decades, that initially youthful leaders have sometimes been middle-aged or older before achieving political power and that many of their actions on achieving power have been at variance with their youthful ideals. In conclusion, it is argued that it is still too early to tell whether any of the recent youth mobilisations signal the formation of new political generations.

This paper explains how the spread of Covid-19 in early-2020 led to containment measures throughout Europe, including a legally enforced lockdown in the UK from 23 March which closed most out-of-home leisure provisions. Time use evidence is then used to show how lockdown led to an abrupt, unprecedented in scale, increase in residual ‘leisure’ time, and how this was distributed and used among males and females, in different age groups. The immediate lessons for leisure studies have been to endorse claims that leisure activities promote well-being, that loss of social connections at work and leisure weakens macro-solidarity, and that the importance of leisure provisions in modern economies. Experiences during the lockdown, and difficulties in existing, then clarify exactly which leisure matters most, for whom, and why.

This paper distinguishes the study of leisure from leisure studies, then proceeds to show that since the 1960s leisure studies has become more uniformly Anglophone and, in this sense, mare ethnocentric. However, although certain “voices” have been lost and others have been silenced by historical events, Anglophone leisure studies has demonstrated an ability to listen to voices from, and to understand the distinctive properties of leisure in societies outside, the core “leisure studies” countries. The paper concludes by arguing that leisure studies now has a promising base from which to make progress in the international comparative study of leisure.