| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 客家文化學院客家社會與文化學程 === 102 === The Life and Adventures of Nelson Young:
A Serious Leisure Approach to His Mountaineering and Academic Research
Abstract
The purpose of this research is to investigate Nelson Yang’s strong devotion to academic research of mountaineering through the analysis of his life history. Why is Nelson, an amateur with mountaineering and academic research as his hobbies, willing to devote much of his time and energy to this business, even more than his full-time job? Based upon the notion of “serious leisure careers” from Canadian sociologist Robert A. Stebbins, this research attempts to describe Nelson’s developmental process of this specific “devotion.”
After the research process of data collection, analysis, summarization, interpretation, and writing, this study uses “narrative” form to present Nelson’s life story. We try to understand his “serious leisure careers” by separating his life into four stages” --- (1). the initial stage of adventuring (1931-1955); (2). the stage of finishing “One Hundred Mountains of Taiwan” (1956-1976); (3). the stage of investigating the historical tracks (1977-1989); and (4). the stage of translation and writing (1990-2012).
As far as Nelson’s “serious leisure careers” are concerned, every stage of his life history involves a specific “domain” --- mountaineering, historical tracks, or writing --- of his pursuit of serious leisure, except the initial stage of adventuring. Furthermore, excluding the initial stage, Nelson’s every other stage can be further divided into four sub-stages --- beginning, development, establishment, and maintenance. All three “domains/stages” still lie in the maintenance sub-stage, not move to the so-called “decline” sub-stage, which is proposed by Stebbins in his original works, yet. All three “domains/stages” influence each other, although the “main theme” of each stage is not the same. In other words, the former stage would be the basis of next period. Without the foundation of previous stage, it is impossible for Nelson to move to the next stage of serious leisure careers.
Key words：Nelson Young, life story, academic research of mountaineering, investigation of historic tracks, serious leisure careers
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