Surfing today evokes many things: thundering waves, warm beaches, bikinis and lifeguards, and carefree pleasure. But is the story of surfing really as simple as popular culture suggests? In this first international political history of the sport, Scott Laderman shows that while wave riding is indeed capable of stimulating tremendous pleasure, its globalization went hand in hand with the blood and repression of the long twentieth century.
Emerging as an imperial instrument in post-annexation Hawaii, spawning a form of tourism that conquered the littoral Third World, tracing the struggle against South African apartheid, and employed as a diplomatic weapon in America’s Cold War arsenal, the saga of modern surfing is only partially captured by Gidget, the Beach Boys, and the film
Blue Crush. From nineteenth-century American empire-building in the Pacific to the low-wage labor of the surf industry today, Laderman argues that surfing in fact closely mirrored American foreign relations. Yet despite its less-than-golden past, the sport continues to captivate people worldwide.
Whether in El Salvador or Indonesia or points between, the modern history of this cherished pastime is hardly an uncomplicated story of beachside bliss. Sometimes messy, occasionally contentious, but never dull, surfing offers us a whole new way of viewing our globalized world.
Table of Content
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION. A Political History of Surfing
CHAPTER 1. How Surfing Became American: The Imperial Roots
of Modern Surf Culture
CHAPTER 2. A World Made Safe for Discovery: Travel, Cultural
Diplomacy, and the Politics of Surf Exploration
CHAPTER 3. Paradise Found: The Discovery of Indonesia and the
Surfing Imagination
CHAPTER 4. When Surfing Discovered It Was Political: Confronting
South African Apartheid
CHAPTER 5. Industrial Surfing: The Commodification of Experience
EPILOGUE. A New Millennium
NOTES
INDEX
About the author
Scott Laderman is Associate Professor of History at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, and the author of Tours of Vietnam: War, Travel Guides, and Memory.
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