Abstract
This is a compelling work of cultural sociology, and a powerful demonstration of why sociologists need to take sport more seriously as an object of empirical study and theoretical reflection. Mark Stranger is a Tasmanian sociologist with extensive insider’s connections to the surfing world, and he has produced the definitive ethnographic account of surfing’s many meanings, its distinctive forms of community and sociality, and its complicated relationships with the sports and lifestyle industries.
At a theoretical level, Stranger treats surfing as an example of postmodern culture. Surfers reject the rationalization of everyday life in favor of an aestheticized communion with nature, at least while they are surfing (p. 13). Furthermore, to the extent that surfers are part of a community or a subculture, it is a distinctively postmodern one in which there are no meetings, and in which formal organizations are peripheral to subcultural life. “[S]urfing’s communal activities,” Stranger explains (p. 120), “often revolve around an obligation-free sociality that emerges out of surfers simply coming together.” There is a shared bond between surfers, to be sure, but the bonds are “neo-tribal,” in Michel Maffesoli’s sense.
Empirically, Stranger offers a richly textured account of the surfing life. The surfing subculture is sustained and reproduced by its “hardcore” and “core” surfers, who organize their lives around the search for the perfect wave, and who visit surfing’s (often remote) sacred sites where powerful and dangerous waves present significant risks. With risk and remoteness, though, there is also the possibility for transcendent experiences of flow, where the self becomes completely involved in the surfing act (p. 125). An important feature of the subculture is the fact that these core members are a regular presence at most surf spots, allowing more recreational surfers to come into contact with the authentic and sacred elements of surf culture. This is reinforced by the surfing media, which circulate images of the surfing aesthetic to a global audience of surfers and non-surfers alike.
At the organizational level, surfing has a complicated and often contradictory relationship with the immensely profitable “surfing culture industry,” as well as an equally complicated relationship with competitive sport. It is in this part of the book that Stranger’s analysis shines most brightly, offering important insights and observations about the tension between commodification and authenticity in contemporary sport and leisure. The surfing culture industry is immense, and its three largest companies—Rip Curl, Quiksilver, and Billabong—are multinational corporations whose products can be found in shopping malls throughout the world; but only some products, and these products reproduce the distinction between an authentic, sacred surf culture and a profane mainstream culture. The mainstream consumer can go to the shopping mall and purchase a t-shirt that proclaims “Only a Surfer Knows the Feeling”; if they want anything more authentic than a symbolic token of the surfing lifestyle, though, they must venture into “real surf shops,” thereby coming into contact with the more authentic elements of the surfing subculture (pp. 196-198).
The success of the surfing culture industry requires a delicate dance between pressures of authenticity and commodification. By marketing and celebrating the authentic surfing lifestyle, surf companies reproduce the distinction between surf culture and mainstream culture that most surfers value. By continuing to produce functional products that surfers actually need (and selling those products at a reasonable cost), they support surfers in their quest to live the surfing life. By sponsoring the world’s top surfers and sending them around the world on an epic quest for perfect surf (documented in surf films that surfers and surf shops broadcast in an almost continual loop), they support the most mythic elements of the surfing subculture. Finally, by symbolically deferring to the mythical surfing experience, these companies have been remarkably successful at preventing mainstream sport companies (Nike, Adidas) from entering the surfing marketplace, while at the same time providing themselves an image of authenticity they can use to position themselves successfully in mainstream retail markets (pp. 194-195). In order to maintain this economic advantage, though, surf companies must maintain a sufficiently strong connection to the foundational experience of surfing.
An added complication for surfing companies is that they must strike the proper balance between surfing’s expression as an aesthetic experience and its organization as a competitive sport. Surf companies try to play to both sides of this divide, sponsoring “soul surfers” as well as competitive surfers. But it is a very risky symbolic boundary. Historically, as Stranger documents clearly, surfing developed in stark opposition to the bureaucratic tendencies of organized sport. Today, while there are strong pressures of “sportization” in surfing, with powerful interests trying to have surfing accepted as an Olympic sport, strong resistance remains within the surfing community. Many surfers are indifferent to competitive surfing, and many others are strongly opposed to it, particularly when their local surf break is cordoned off for professional and amateur competitions. Nevertheless, Stranger points to a number of interesting and provocative points of synthesis that are emerging within the new environment of competitive surfing. In many ways surfing competitions offer the possibility for recovering the transcendent and sacred elements of the surfing experience. When typically over-crowded urban surf breaks are closed for professional competitions, they provide the opportunity for the peak experience of flow, a rare opportunity to surf perfect waves in uncrowded conditions. In addition, when surf competitions transport competitors to remote locations in order to wait for perfect surf to appear, they reproduce the most mythic elements of the sacred surf pilgrimage. Stranger describes these tendencies as an “oppositional form” of sportization, in which the events are organized as attempts to simulate the core elements of the surfing aesthetic. Again, a connection to the foundational experience of surfing is necessary for maintaining a sense of authenticity.
One important question, which Stranger does not really pursue, concerns the extent to which the culture of surfing can be generalized to other sports and leisure activities. Future research and future scholars will need to determine how many of the findings from this ethnographic study can be generalized. More work is still needed to determine what surfing can teach us about contemporary developments in sporting culture. Nevertheless, most readers should find Surfing Life to be an insightful, engaging, and entertaining piece of cultural sociology.