Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

hat is fun? How is it distinct from happiness or pleasure? How do we know when we are having it? This book is the first to provide a comprehensive sociological account of this taken for granted social phenomenon. Fincham investigates areas such as our memories of fun in childhood, the fun we have as adults, our muted experiences of fun at work and our lived experiences of having fun. Using first-hand accounts and a new approach to interpreting fun, the paradox of fun as not serious or unimportant whilst at the same time essential for a happy life is exposed. Addressing questions of control, transgression and the primacy of social relationships in fun, The Sociology of Fun is intended to provoke discussion about how we want to have fun and who determines the fun we have.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

An exploratory discourse analysis of a relatively unexplored concept, this monograph begins with a very thin literature review, examines various definitions of the concept of "fun," and explores data from a survey of 201 people conducted online in 2014. The survey asked about memories from childhood and recent occasions of fun. Sociologist Fincham (Univ. of Sussex, UK) does not identify the ethnicity, nationality, and geographic location of the sample, though later in the book he mentions that "the majority of the respondents were from the U.K." Seventy-nine percent of the respondents were between 20 and 50 years of age, 68 percent were women, and the sample was "heavily biased towards middle class occupations." The semantic differences the author identifies, as well as the patterns he claims exist in the survey responses, form the core of the book. After classifying fun in childhood, adulthood, school, and work, Fincham proposes that "fun" can be distinguished from happiness and pleasure; is social; may have transgressive elements; and is a "discourse, applied retrospectively." For students of British cultural studies, the lack of methodological rigor should present no problem. For traditional American positivists, the book will disappoint. Summing Up: Optional. Graduate students and faculty only. --Kathleen M. McKinley, Cabrini College

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Ben Fincham is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Sussex, UK. He has previously published in areas of mental health, work and suicide.