Page 28 - seminars

RECREATION: FUEL FOR LIFE

PROF. DR. BÜLENT GÜRBÜZ
President of Recreation Studies and Research
Association, Ankara University Faculty of Sports
Sciences, Department of Sports Management

Especially in the last 50 years, the concepts of leisure and recreation, which have been associated with
many fields and become increasingly important in developed societies such as the USA, Canada and
England as an academic field of study, do not have a single agreed definition. As the American scientist
Henderson (1996), who has a lot of work on this subject, stated, there is no justification for trying to fit
recreation into a single definition. Recreation is not such a narrow concept as to fit into a single body. The
meaning of recreation may differ according to the activities the individual participates in in his free time
and the paradigms used to examine the meaning of the concept. We can also state that recreation is
defined in various ways in different cultures and generations.
Aristotle, an ancient Greek philosopher, also stated that "having enough free time, unlike other parts of life
(time of existence, time for work), is a necessity to increase the welfare of individuals and societies" to draw
attention to the importance of leisure time (Saunders, 1981). ). Leisure time offers individuals the
opportunity to participate in a wide range of activities, especially physical, cultural, artistic, touristic and
various domestic activities. How (active or passive) and with which activities the individual will use this
valuable time is of course his own because there is no obligation to participate in recreational activities. The
individual participates in the activity for himself and voluntarily. Especially in developed societies, it is
understood from researches that individuals value leisure time and see this time period as an important
part of their lives (Newman, Tay, & Diener, 2014). At this point, the main question that comes to mind is
“What are the factors that make recreation so important and even cause it to be considered as a fuel for
life in some studies?
The most important problem of today's societies is that the free time we have is used more or more often
passively. In order to understand how big the problem is, it is useful to understand the participation rates in
physical activity in the world and the problems brought by this passive life.

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