Visualizing leisure

This essay defines the visual approach through a review of leisure-related literature and draws insights from scholars across the social sciences. Visual leisure is the collection of several approaches to research that recognizes the relevance of vision to ways we make sense of leisure in our lives. It is not about more data or incremental advancement, but on providing a different kind of data that repositions research questions in ways that verbal or numeric information are not able to do. Visual leisure has tremendous potential to democratize research through an expanded accessibility of data, an enhanced transparency of argument, and an empowerment of lay people in research-based policy and planning processes. Problems with both visual literacy and representation of leisure contexts are developed as central motivations for producing this special issue.