Globalization, cosmopolitanism, and leisure rights: The flaws of the Sao Paulo Declaration

Abstract

The Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump in 2016 are widely held to signal the return of protectionism and isolationism in the Anglosphere. This ran counter to the Sao Paulo Declaration, issued by the World Leisure and Recreation Association (1998). For nearly 20 years, the Declaration has been at the axis of debates on the preferred trajectory of leisure relations in the West. The Brexit and Trump election campaigns seized upon the undesirable consequences of globalization and cosmopolitanism, that is, job losses and the contraction of real wages caused by outsourcing, immigration, and the threats to ‘the whole way’ of national life. The campaigns exposed globalization as an uneven process that primarily benefits the elite, and cosmopolitanism as a patchwork process. The paper examines the meaning of globalization and cosmopolitanism, and their shortfalls, in the Sao Paulo Declaration. It moves on to consider the argument made by some writers in Leisure Studies that volunteerism is an antidote to the worst consequences of globalization.