Shyber O. Recreational and Leisure Practices in the Modern Ukraine’s Culture

The dissertation investigates recreational and leisure practices as a social and cultural phenomenon. It reveals the essence of recreational and leisure practices and features of their implementation in the culture of modern Ukraine. The analysis of the scientific literature on the researched problems discloses interdisciplinarity of the study subject and indicates the recreational and leisure practices have already existed in modern Ukraine. The research exposes the recreational theory’s institutionalization as an independent field of the Western science knowledge starting from the second half of the XX century, and founds out the reasons for the domestic scientists’ poor attention to the issues of recreational and leisure practices. The research outlines the semantic field of concepts related to recreational and leisure practices, namely “recreation” and “leisure”, with the concept of “recreation” being a dominant one. The dissertation specifies the conceptual and categorical apparatus under research and reveals the essential characteristics of the recreational and leisure practices, their typology and functions. The author offers own definition of the “recreational and leisure practices” concept and explains the social and cultural determinants of the recreational and leisure practices’ transformation through the prism of modern society. Key words: recreational and leisure practices, recreation, leisure, creativity, virtualization and digitalization of recreational.