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Robert Alan Stebbins (born June 22, 1938) is a Canadian sociologist. He is a professor emeritus at the University of Calgary and was associate editor for Leisure and Voluntaristics Review: Brill Research Perspectives.

Stebbins has published more than 300 research articles and is the author of 65 books and monographs. Most of his work is in leisure studies and has centered on amateurs, hobbyists, career volunteers, and the serious leisure perspective.

Stebbins is the former president of Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association and Social Science Federation of Canada. He is the recipient of the Outstanding Contribution Award from the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association and the Marguerite Dentinger Prize from the Association canadienne-française de l'Alberta. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1999.

Education

Stebbins received his bachelor's degree from Macalester College in 1961 and then completed a master's degree and doctoral studies in sociology from the University of Minnesota in 1962 and 1964 respectively.

Career

After receiving his Ph.D., Stebbins was appointed as associate professor of sociology at Presbyterian College, where he taught for one year before working at Memorial University of Newfoundland as an assistant professor from 1965 till 1968. For the next three years, Stebbins served as associate professor and head of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and then taught as a professor from 1971 till 1973. He joined the University of Texas at Arlington as a professor of sociology for a three-year term. In 1976, Stebbins moved to Canada and joined the University of Calgary as head of the Department of Sociology till 1982 and then taught as a professor until 1999. In 2000, he was promoted to faculty professor and then to professor emeritus of sociology.

Stebbins served as president of the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association from 1987 till 1990 and Social Science Federation of Canada from 1990 till 1993. From 1997 till 2002, Stebbins was board director of the World Leisure and Recreation Association. He became a senior fellow of the World Leisure Academy and vice-president of Research Committee 13 (Sociology of Leisure) at the International Sociological Association in 2010.

Research

Stebbins has conducted extensive qualitative research on humor, work, and leisure. Most of his work in leisure studies has centered on the serious leisure perspective (SLP), which is a term he coined in 1982 and elaborated on in 2007. Stebbins' work has focused on developing a grounded theory of leisure of all types.

A common subfield of his research is amateur musicians. Stebbins authored an article in 1969 about jazz musicians and role distance behavior. In 1978, Stebbins researched the creation of high culture and the role of American amateur musicians, proposing a new method to analyze high culture.

Stebbins has authored more than 50 books and monographs. In 1971, he published Commitment to Deviance: The Nonprofessional Criminal in the Community which was recommended in Social Forces to “professions which deal with the problems of publicly labeled deviants.” Stebbins published Amateurs: On the Margin Between Work and Leisure in 1979; Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley writes for Isis that it “offers useful definitions for amateurs and professionals." In 1991, Lori V. Morris reviewed Stebbins' book The Laugh-Makers: Stand-Up Comedy as Art, Business, and Life-Style, writing: “Anyone with a fan's curiosity about comedians would likely find this book interesting.” In 1996, Stebbins published The Barbershop Singer: Inside the Social World of a Musical Hobby. Stan Parker of the University of Brighton called the book “short but highly readable."

In The Serious Leisure Perspective (2020), Stebbins provides a synthesis of the 47 years of work on the SLP. A website hosting information on the SLP was created in 2006 by Stebbins in collaboration with Jenna Hartel.

Awards and honors

• 1996 – Elected Fellow, Academy of Leisure Sciences
• 1996 – Distinguished Research Award, University of Calgary
• 1997 – Outstanding Contribution Award, Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association
• 1999 – Elected Fellow, Royal Society of Canada
• 2003 – Marguerite Dentinger Prize, Association canadienne-française de l'Alberta
• 2010 – Elected Senior Fellow, World Leisure Academy
• 2019 – Honorary Lifetime Member, Leisure Studies Association
• 2022 – Best Book Prize (for The Serious Leisure Perspective), Leisure Studies Association

References

1. ^ Contemporary Authors. New Revision Series. Vol. 181. Detroit: Gale. 2009. pp. 369–371. OCLC 506099917 – via Internet Archive.
2. ^ "Robert Stebbins". Department of Sociology | University of Calgary. Archived from the original on 2024-04-13.
3. ^ "Robert A. Stebbins". Google Scholar. Retrieved 2024-11-22.
4. ^ "President List". Canadian Sociological Association. Archived from the original on 2022-09-14.
5. ^ "Outstanding Contribution Award". Canadian Sociological Association. Retrieved 2024-11-22.
6. ^ "Le Prix Marguerite-Dentinger" (PDF). ACFA. Retrieved 2024-11-22.
7. ^ "Member Directory". The Royal Society of Canada. Retrieved 2024-11-22.
8. "Past Boards". International Sociological Association. Retrieved 2024-11-22.
9. Stebbins, Robert A. (1982). "Serious Leisure: A Conceptual Statement". The Pacific Sociological Review. 25 (2): 251–272. doi:10.2307/1388726. JSTOR 1388726. S2CID 147602961.
10. Stebbins, Robert A. (2007). Serious Leisure: A Perspective for Our Time. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 978-0-7658-0363-4.
11. Stebbins, Robert A. (2013). "From dabbler to serious amateur musician and beyond: Clarifying a crucial step". International Journal of Community Music. 6 (2): 141–152. doi:10.1386/ijcm.6.2.141_1.
12. "Biography of Robert A. Stebbins". The Serious Leisure Perspective (SLP). Retrieved 2022-10-31.
13. Stebbins, Robert A. (1969). "Role Distance, Role Distance Behaviour and Jazz Musicians" (PDF). The British Journal of Sociology. 20 (4): 406–415. doi:10.2307/588925. JSTOR 588925. PMID 5374203.
14. Stebbins, Robert A. (1978). "Creating High Culture: The American Amateur Classical Musician". The Journal of American Culture. 1 (3): 616–631. doi:10.1111/j.1542-734X.1978.0103_616.x.
15. Breslauer, Helen J. (1972-03-01). "COMMITMENT TO DEVIANCE: THE NONPROFESSIONAL CRIMINAL IN THE COMMUNITY. By Robert A. Stebbins. Westport: Greenwood, 1971. 201 pp. $9.50". Social Forces. 50 (3): 418. doi:10.1093/sf/50.3.418. ISSN 0037-7732.
16. Ainley, Marianne Gosztonyi (1981). "Amateurs: On the Margin between Work and Leisure . Robert A. Stebbins". Isis. 72 (1): 109–110. doi:10.1086/352668. ISSN 0021-1753.
17. Morris, Lori V. (1991). "The Laugh-Makers: Stand-Up Comedy as Art, Business, and Life-Style. Robert A. Stebbins". American Journal of Sociology. 96 (5): 1296–1297. doi:10.1086/229673.
18. Parker, Stan (1997). "Book reviews". Leisure Studies. 16 (2): 133–136. doi:10.1080/026143697375467.
19. Stebbins, Robert A. (2020). The Serious Leisure Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan Cham. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-48036-3. ISBN 978-3-030-48035-6.
20. "The Serious Leisure Perspective". The Serious Leisure Perspective. Retrieved 2024-11-22.
21. ^ "Prof. Dr. Robert Stebbins". World Leisure Organization. Retrieved 2024-11-22.
22. "Honorary Lifetime Membership: Prof Robert Stebbins". Leisure Studies Association. Archived from the original on 2022-09-14.

• Academic staff of the University of Calgary
• Living people
• Macalester College alumni
• University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts alumni
• 1938 births
• Canadian sociologists