Geographical Aspects of Leisure: The Importance of Leisure for Shaping of Social Capital and Local Identities

The thesis discusses the importance of leisure as a part of an individual's everyday life for the formation of social relationships and ties influencing whole society. In fact, leisure is understood as a sample of practices and activities with underlying social and cultural factors. These practices are allocated in time and space, having an impact on space. The study is devoted to the use of leisure, its position and importance in the general time framework of a day. There is also a discussion of the trends and shifts in society associated with broader cultural and institutional processes (transformation of the labour market, globalisation, individualisation, differentiation, post-communist transformation, and the gender question). In addition, the study empirically examines the importance and potential of leisure activities for the formation of place attachment and associated processes of the creation of social capital, contact networks and knowledge transfer. Through these effects, leisure can contribute to the endogenous development of distinct types of area. In fact, attention is focused on two ways of leisure time activities with a considerable local tie and potential for the creation of social capital. These are the second home tourism and activities performed within voluntary associations...