In this episode we discuss critical surf studies as a field of academic research, speak to the merit of surf-related experiential learning programs, and share highlights from our research into decolonizing sustainable surf tourism. We offer background into the critical ethnographic focus of our study abroad program, Surfing & Sustainability: Political Ecology in Costa Rica, explain our critique of the sustainable surf tourism-for-sustainable development paradigm, explore links between regenerative agriculture networks and surf tourism communities, and describe the political ecology of real estate as a conceptual frame for analyzing surfscape occupation. We end with a few ideas on how surfers can engage with critical surf studies concepts to support greater socio-ecological well being in the places we travel to surf.

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Resources:

We’ve been helped in this work by recent revisions of the historiography of surfing – Scott Laderman’s Empire in Waves, Isaiah Walker’s Waves of Resistance, Krista Comer’s Surfer Girls in the New World Order, Kevin Dawson’s Undercurrents of Power, Dexter Zavalza Hough-Snee and Alexander Sotelo Eastman’s The Critical Surf Studies Reader (including Dina Gilio-Whitaker’s chapter on Appropriating Surfing and the Politics of Indigenous Authenticity), and Allison Rose Jefferson’s Living the California Dream: African American Leisure Sites during the Jim Crow Era.

Additional Resources:

Surfing and Sustainability: Political Ecology in Costa Rica • Summer | Anthropology (uga.edu)

Lost But Not Forgotten, virtual reality project on surfing history and coastal development in Long Beach, California – Lost But Not Forgotten VR TRAILER – YouTube. Bryce Leisy is in the Applied Anthropology MA program in the Department of Anthropology at Cal State Long Beach and is the Surf Coach for Wilson High School in Long Beach, California.

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Bios:

Tara Ruttenberg is Ph.D. Candidate in Development Studies at the Wageningen School of Social Sciences, specializing in critical surf studies and alternatives to development in sustainable surf tourism. She is a member of the Institute for Women Surfers, hosts women’s surf retreats in Costa Rica, and writes stories and articles for alternative surf magazines and her personal website, Tarantula Surf. Tara’s current research includes decolonizing sustainable surf tourism, surfeminism as emancipatory politics in surfing culture, and a diverse economies approach to development alternatives in occupied Global South surfscapes.

Pete Brosius is Distinguished Research Professor of Anthropology at the University of Georgia and Founding Director of UGA’s Center for Integrative Conservation Research. He is widely recognized for his work with Penan hunter-gatherers in Sarawak, Malaysia, and for his contributions to the development of Political Ecology. Throughout his career he has been engaged with issues of environmental degradation, indigenous rights and conservation. Brosius has been a surfer since 1969, and for the past ten years he has been the director of UGA’s Surfing & Sustainability: Political Ecology in Costa Rica study abroad program. His current research includes projects on the Tolak Reklamasi movement in Bali, Indonesia, and the political ecology of real estate in occupied surfscapes in the Global South.

Together, Pete and Tara run the study abroad program, Surfing and Sustainability: Political Ecology in Costa Rica, the first of its kind, now in its 10th year running. Their recent work critiquing sustainable surf tourism and proposing diverse economic alternatives to tourism development has been published in books including The Critical Surf Studies Reader (Duke University Press 2017) , and The Ecolaboratory: Environmental Governance and Economic Development in Costa Rica (University of Arizona Press 2020). Their forthcoming research on localisms of resistance in occupied surfscapes is currently under review with Geoforum and a new critical surf studies collection edited by Lydia Heberling, David Kamper and Jess Ponting.