To Have Fun for Sharing, to Share for Having Fun: Meanings and Practices of Leisure in Italy in a Time of Crisis

In the period between 2008 and 2015, Italy has undergone a severe economiccrisis derived from an on-going process of low economic growth, employmentshortage, new social urgencies. These phenomena have been accompanied by asignificant (and in some ways extremely innovating) change in people’s lifestylesand modes of consuming leisure time. As a matter of fact, a larger attention hasbeen paid to the “quality” of leisure time, considered as a time to share, to createand re-discover authentic social relationships whose quality is precisely determinedby the level of involvement in practices shared with one’s own social circle.The paper intends to offer some empirical evidence, taken from structural dataconcerning the use of leisure time in Italy, showing how the conceptualization ofleisure time is changing in the light of these significant socio-economic changes.