From criminality to creativity: how studies of surfer subcultures reinvented invention

Abstract

This article explores the shifting context within which surfing subcultures have been surveyed and discussed. Once construed as paradigmatic examples of ‘deviant’ youth cultures, these subcultures have recently been lauded for their creativity, innovativeness and entrepreneurialism. The text shows how contemporary management theory, which aims to ‘reinvent invention’, fits into a genre previously established by criminological studies of surfers. This article also argues that the field of sports studies has mediated between these two social scientific disciplines: sports studies scholars have contributed to the reappraisal of surfing subcultures, being early in explicating the enterprising potential of the ‘subterranean’ values they espouse. Studies of surfing can thus be construed as instrumental in bringing about recent mutations within contemporary capitalism.

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to express gratitude to Kalle Jonasson for his suggestions during the early phase of preparing this text, and to Kerstin Hamilton and Karen Williams Middleton for their creative input and attentive reading when preparing the final manuscript.

Notes

^1.Irwin, ‘Surfing’, 137.

^2.Shah, ‘Sources and Patterns of Innovation’, 11.

^3.Atkinson, ‘Entering Scapeland’ and Beal and Smith, ‘Maverick's’.

^4.Humphreys, ‘Shredheads Go Mainstream’?

^5.Midol, ‘Cultural Dissents and Technical Innovations’; Stranger, ‘The Aesthetics of Risk’, Stranger, ‘Surface and Substructure’; Wheaton and Beal, ‘Keeping it Real’ and Lewis, ‘In Search of the Postmodern Surfer’.

^6.Roszak, Making of a Counterculture.

^7.Heath and Potter, Rebel Sell; Boltanski and Chiapello, New Spirit of Capitalism and Sennett, Culture of the New Capitalism.

^8.Boltanski and Chiapello, New Spirit of Capitalism, 97.

^9.Boltanski and Chiapello, ‘New Spirit of Capitalism’, 180.

^10.Žižek, Organs Without Bodies, 184.

^11.Palmås, ‘Bodies Without Bodhis’.

^12. Cf. Humphreys, ‘Shredheads Go Mainstream’? 152 and 153.

^13.Thrift, ‘Re-Inventing Invention’.

^14.Comer, Surfer Girls in The New World Order.

^15.Huybers-Withers and Livingston, ‘Mountain Biking is for Men’.

^16.Thorpe, ‘Moving Bodies Beyond the Social/Biological Divide’.

^17.Thorpe and Rinehart, ‘Alternative Sport and Affect’.

^18.Amin, Postfordism.

^19.Chandler, The Visible Hand.

^20.Noble, America by Design.

^21.Thrift, ‘Re-Inventing Invention’.

^22.Ibid., 280.

^23.Ibid., 281.

^24.von Hippel, Democratizing Innovation, 1.

^25.von Hippel, ‘Lead Users’.

^26.Shah, ‘Sources and Patterns of Innovation’.

^27.Latour, Science in Action.

^28.Voss, ‘Historical Construction’.

^29.Desbordes, ‘Empirical Analysis of the Innovation’.

^30.Ibid., 484.

^31.MacLean, ‘Artificially Natural’, 7.

^32.Palmås, ‘Designing the Artificially Natural’.

^33.Shah, ‘Sources and Patterns of Innovation’.

^34.Voss, ‘The Historical Construction’.

^35.von Hippel, ‘Lead Users’.

^36.Shah, ‘Sources and Patterns of Innovation’, 5.

^37.Voss, ‘The Historical Construction’.

^38.Bogers, Afuah, and Bastian, ‘Users as Innovators’, 859.

^39.Ford and Brown, Surfing and Social Theory, 43.

^40.Ibid., 43.

^41. E.g. Skinner, Gilbert, and Edwards, Some Like it Hot.

^42.Fiske, Reading the Popular.

^43.Ibid., 61.

^44.Ibid., 62.

^45.Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture and Hebdige, Subculture.

^46.Gelder, ‘Introduction to Part Two’.

^47.Irwin, Scenes.

^48.Irwin, ‘Remembering Erving Goffman’.

^49.Irwin, ‘Surfing’.

^50.Ibid., 132.

^51.Ibid., 134.

^52.Ibid., 148.

^53.Ibid., 159.

^54.Ibid., 134.

^55.Ford and Brown, Surfing and Social Theory, 65 and Matza and Sykes, ‘Juvenile Delinquency’.

^56.Irwin and Cressey, ‘Thieves, Convicts’.

^57.Young, ‘The Subterranean World of Play’, 149.

^58.Ibid., 149., 150.

^59.Ford and Brown, Surfing and Social Theory.

^60.Ibid., 65.

^61.Rutsky, ‘Surfing the Other’.

^62.Ibid., 16.

^63.Irwin, ‘Notes on the Status’, 73.

^64.Ibid., 73., 76.

^65.Callon, Laws of the Markets.

^66.Stengers, Thinking with Whitehead, 332.

^67.Rutsky, ‘Surfing the Other’, 20 and 21.

^68.Ibid., 21.

^69.Wheaton, Understanding Lifestyle Sports, 2.

^70.Midol, ‘Cultural Dissents and Technical Innovations’ and Midol and Broyer, ‘Toward an Anthropological Analysis’.

^71.Pearson, ‘The Institutionalization of Sport Forms’ and Sewart, ‘The Commodification of Sport’.

^72.Pearson, ‘The Institutionalization of Sport Forms’.

^73.Sewart, ‘The Commodification of Sport’.

^74.Midol, ‘Cultural Dissents and Technical Innovations’.

^75.Pearson, ‘The Institutionalization of Sport Forms’; Sewart, ‘The Commodification of Sport’.

^76.Midol, ‘Cultural Dissents and Technical Innovations’, 23.

^77.Ibid., 23., 24.

^78.Midol and Broyer, ‘Toward an Anthropological Analysis’, 209.

^79. Cf. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy.

^80.Midol and Broyer, ‘Toward an Anthropological Analysis’, 207.

^81.Ibid., 207.

^82.Boltanski and Chiapello, New Spirit of Capitalism.

^83.Žižek, ‘You May!’

^84.Žižek, For They Know not What They Do, 237.

^85.Žižek, Looking Awry, 102.

^86.Wheaton, Understanding Lifestyle Sports.

^87. Cf. Humphreys, ‘Shredheads Go Mainstream?’; Wheaton and Beal, ‘Keeping it Real’ and Lanagan, ‘Dropping In’.