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The evolution of surfing-from the first forms of wave-riding in Oceania, Africa, and the Americas to the inauguration of surfing as a competitive sport at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics-traverses the age of empire, the rise of globalization, and the onset of the digital age, taking on new meanings at each juncture. As corporations have sought to promote surfing as a lifestyle and leisure enterprise, the sport has also narrated its own epic myths that place North America at the center of surf culture and relegate Hawai'i and other indigenous surfing cultures to the margins. The Critical Surf Studies Reader brings together eighteen interdisciplinary essays that explore surfing's history and development as a practice embedded in complex and sometimes oppositional social, political, economic, and cultural relations. Refocusing the history and culture of surfing, this volume pays particular attention to reclaiming the roles that women, indigenous peoples, and people of color have played in surfing.
Contributors. Douglas Booth, Peter Brosius, Robin Canniford, Krista Comer, Kevin Dawson, Clifton Evers, Chris Gibson, Dina Gilio-Whitaker, Dexter Zavalza Hough-Snee, Scott Laderman, Kristin Lawler, lisahunter, Colleen McGloin, Patrick Moser, Tara Ruttenberg, Cori Schumacher, Alexander Sotelo Eastman, Glen Thompson, Isaiah Helekunihi Walker, Andrew Warren, Belinda Wheaton
List of contents
List of Abbreviations ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction / Dexter Zavalza Hough-Snee and Alexander Sotelo Eastman 1
Part I. Coloniality and Decolonization
1. On a Mission: Hiram Bingham and the Rhetoric of Urgency / Patrick Moser 29
2. A World Apart: Pleasure, Rebellion, and the Politics of Surf Tourism / Scott Laderman 47
3. Kai Ea: Rising Waves of National and Ethnic Hawaiian Identities / Isaiah Helekunihi Walker 62
4. Consolidation, Creativity, and (de)Colonization in the State of Modern Surfing / Dexter Zavalza Hough-Snee and Alexander Sotelo Eastman 84
5. Decolonizing Sustainable Surf Tourism / Tara Ruttenberg and Peter Brosius 109
Part II. Race, Ethnicity, and Identity
6. Surfing beyond Racial and Colonial Imperatives in Early Modern Atlantic Africa and Oceania / Kevin Dawson 135
7. Pushing under the Whitewash: Revisiting the Making of South Africa's Surfing Sixties / Glen Thompson 155
8. Space Invaders in Surfing's White Tribe: Exploring Surfing, Race, and Identity / Belinda Wheaton 177
9. Indigenous Surfing: Pedagogy, Pleasure, and Decolonial Practice / Colleen McGloin 196
10. Appropriating Surfing and the Politics of Indigenous Authenticity / Dina Gilio-Whitaker 214
Part III. Feminist Critical Geography
11. Surfeminism, Critical Regionalism, and Public Scholarship / Krista Comer 235
12. Desexing Surfing? Pedagogies of Possibility / lisahunter 263
13. "My Mother Is a Fish": From Stealth Feminism to Surfeminism / Cori Schumacher 284
Part IV. Capitalism, Economics, and the Commodification of Surf Culture
14. Free Ride: The Food Stamp Surfer, American Counterculture, and the Refusal of Work / Kristin Lawler 305
15. The Political Economy of Surfing Culture: Production, Profit, and Representation / Douglas Booth 318
16. Soulful and Precarious: The Working Experiences of Surfboard Makers / Andrew Warren and Chris Gibson 342
17. Branded Primitives / Robin Canniford 365
18. Surfing and Contemporary China / Clifton Evers 386
Bibliography 403
Contributors 443
Index 449
About the author
Dexter Zavalza Hough-Snee and Alexander Sotelo Eastman, editors
Summary
An innovative exploration of the history and culture of surfing that recasts wave-riding as a complex cultural practice and reclaims the forgotten roles that women, indigenous peoples, and peoples of color have played in the its evolution.
