The increase of creation of protected areas in the world in the last 20 years and the complexities which surround them have resulted in a new field of studies under human and social sciences. This paper approaches the issue of leisure and protected areas with an empirical focus on a biological conservation unit and the populations who live and stay around it. The claim is that the categorization of the protected area disputes, by a group of actors, values and practices on conservation. In such dispute, leisure is a tense and (im)possible mediation for the relations between society and nature. From observations, interviews, photographs and questionnaires with non-governmental organizations , local residents, representatives of tourism enterprises and public powers, we intend to discuss the dynamics of the social relations constituted in the social processes of nature preservation and the particularity of leisure as a practice and a value in the interactions among different social actors and also the issue of the preservation of protected area.
Protected areas; society; leisure