E-goverment y open goverment

Young people’s lifestyles are essentially more paradoxical in terms of the juxtaposition of the predictable and the unpredictable than they ever have been in the past.

(Miles, 2000:15)

Godbey (2008) asserts that the leisure patterns of an individual depend upon the lifestyle choices assumed by them. Lifestyle is the specific pattern of everyday activities that characterises an individual (Reimer, 1995: 124).

Lifestyle consists of making an independent choice for domestic practices, food, housing, dress and appearance, selection of leisure and behavioural activities that relate to their consumption patterns (Veal, 1993; Cockerham, Rutten and Abel, 1997). Leisure is one of the components of lifestyle experiences, which is a varied set of activities chosen freely that incorporates personal interests, market provisions and public resources and is crucial to sexual self-development and individual lifestyle experiences (Veal, 2001;

18 See section “Conceptualising Young people and Positive sexual health” (pg. 7)

Kelly, 2012). A sense of individuality is one important feature for adolescent development, which is the time to explore ‘who am I?’ and ‘what do my social experiences and relationships mean to me?’ (Kotarba and Wells, 1987: 413).

Dwyer (2000) describes young people’s diasporic identities is negotiated and articulated based on gender relations within the social and local contexts of their everyday lives. Leisure refers to freedom in experimenting with adult roles and the opportunity to explore one’s ability to create personal identity and to learn new skills, attitudes and behaviours that are acceptable within the sociocultural group (Kelly and Godbey, 1992; Tirone and Pedlar, 2000). In the contemporary world, young people’s changing lifestyles and leisure pursuits are heavily influenced by the consumer culture; which signifies individuality, self-expression and a stylistic self-consciousness (Featherstone, 1987; Miles, 2000). Young people’s lifestyles and patterns of consumption, which tend to symbolise cultural identification, have been severely affected by the refined marketing techniques of the multinational industries that target the spending power of the contemporary youth (Miles, 2000; Furlong and Cartmel, 2007).

Leisure and lifestyle are focused on the daily lives of young men and women;

where individual attitudes and behaviours construct an independent identity in relation to other people within a given structure, which differentiates individuals and connects them to groups within the society.

Young people actively build and rebuild their lifestyles and identities around leisure, work and space to experience and participate in new urban economies where they start spending greater amounts of time in mixed gender environments (Ball, Maguire and Macrae, 2000; Furlong and cartmel, 2007; White and Wyn, 2008). Young people in contemporary society experience leisure in different forms such as hanging out, attending and participating in sports and outdoor physical activities, watching television or videos, listening to music or radio, playing computer games, browsing web and digital spaces in which leisure becomes a ‘fluid’ concept (Abott-Chapman and Robertson, 2009). Young people gathering together in clubs or pubs is part of growing up and many would have adopted some adult leisure practices by the age of 16, with rituals of intoxication at the centre (Roberts, 2006;

Blackman, 2011). The appeal of nightclubs is strongest among the young

people aged 18-24 and has become an integral part of many young people’s consumption lives (Hollands, 2009; Mintel, 2013). The combination of assumed private space -with freedom, the presence of the opposite sex, live music, intoxicating agents and many other factors- creates positive and favourable conditions to build relationships, which may result in sexual intimacies or relationships (Kotarba and Wells, 1987). Jackson (2004) illustrates four forms of sexual experience in the nightclub setting: search for sex, expressing the feeling of sex and sexuality through displaying ones own body, creating communities based around sexual orientation and sharing sex or engaging in sexual play through sexual-self exploration.

Young people see leisure as a personal space, where they express their freedom to experience sexual lifestyles (Wearing, 1998). According to Miles (2000), young people are willing to take more risks in their leisure in the pursuits for pleasure. France (2007) argues that young people’s risk taking behaviour is part of the normal transitional process and they are willing to take more risks in their leisure time that may be driven by hedonistic and self-centered values. Risk taking behaviours such as alcohol, drug abuse, cigarette smoking and unsafe sex are prevalent among young people’s everyday lives in contemporary society (Abott-Chapman and Robertson, 2009). More young people are engaged in casual sexual relationships and hope that these non-dating sexual encounters will lead to conventional dating relationships, possibly a long-term relationship (Manning, Giordano and Longmore, 2006; Wentland and Reissing, 2011). The understanding of casual sex varies from having one off sex with a person whom they have never met before or sexual engagement with friends or colleagues with whom they are not in a committed romantic relationship (Weaver and Herold, 2000;

Eisenberg et al., 2009).

Sexual activity is not only central to leisure but all forms of leisure have sexual connotations and meanings attached to them (Kelly, 2012). For young people, leisure takes place in a greater variety of settings; which means the time and place is key for sexual interaction (Kelly and Godbey, 1992). The opportunities for young men and women within romantic relationships for

relation building or sexual intimacies is sporadic and opportunistic; and takes place within leisure defined spaces including parks, temples, markets, cinema, shopping malls or at home when other family members are not present (Alexander et al., 2006). The space created for young people’s leisure such as shopping centers, dance clubs, youth centers and schools are mostly controlled by adults; however, young people manage to create a ‘private space’ within this space to experience their sexual lifestyles (Varner, 2007).

Luster and Small (1994) argue that adolescent sexual lives are presented with a higher number of risk factors and they are likely to experience increased risky sexual behaviours through cumulative risk factors, which varies by gender. The leisure and lifestyle experiences of young people in the developing and developed world are significantly different due to the accessibility of resources but they are also shaped by sociocultural traditions and patterns of availability (Furlong, 2013). The local context plays an important role in influencing and shaping risk-taking behaviours among these young people. Some of these risk-taking behaviours may be specifically related to sociocultural norms and traditions. For example, drinking alcohol within the Nepalese community is part of the culture (Dhital et al., 2001), whereas nightclubbing is considered compulsory for young people in the western society and not going to clubs may be identified as ‘being different’

and may force them to be socially excluded. Blackman (2009) suggests that the idea of normalisation operates for young people’s alcohol and drugs consumption and in this thesis I will explore the idea of normalisation in the context of young people’s sexual lifestyles and relationships to understand the positive sexual health.

Young people’s leisure and lifestyle experiences have long been a source of social cohesion as well as conflict between themselves, their families, community and society (Furlong, 2013). Crawford and Godbey (1987: 119) identified 3 types of constraints for leisure behaviour: intrapersonal, interpersonal and structural. Intrapersonal constraints include individual psychological barriers that stop people participating in leisure activities;

interpersonal constraints involve interaction or relationships between individual’s characteristics and structural constraints include factors such as

family obligations, socioeconomic conditions, space and time, resources and opportunities that limit personal desire to experience leisure (Ibid., 1987).

These constraints are interrelated and the leisure participation depends on constant negotiations of multiple factors based on a hierarchy of importance that is influenced by the structural factors around them (Crawford, Jackson and Godbey, 1991; Jackson, Crawford and Godbey, 1993). Although young people have the time and opportunities for leisure activities; in many cases, the leisure lifestyles are restricted by the lack of spending power, legal implications, parental restrictions and cultural practices (Glendinning, Hendry and Shucksmith, 1995; Furlong and Cartmel, 2007). Leisure, rituals of intoxications and sexual lifestyles are central to the development of young people’s sexual lives in the modern society but are constrained by several challenges raised by the structural factors around them. In this thesis, I will explore to what extent Nepalese young people develop the skills and competence to adapt to the situation and overcome barriers to experiencing leisure and sexual lifestyles in the contemporary society of the UK.