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Sport in World History #1
Empire in Waves: A Political History of Surfing (Sport in World History)
Surfing today evokes many 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.
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.
- GenresNonfictionGrad School
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
2 people are currently reading
85 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 24, 2014
This is the history of surfing the surf industry desperately hopes you won't read.
Laderman dares to tread into the heart of Big Surfing's darkness like no other and he does so with aplomb, using incisive strokes to cleave wide the illusion that surfing is a happy-go-lucky, apolitical, pastime with a "leave no footprints" ethos.
Within the pages of EIW, we meet the true face of Big Surfing, one that will surely leave the reader with a deeper understanding of how and why such a beloved activity has been warped for profit and power. If you love surfing, read this book. Then give it to all your friends who love surfing.
Laderman dares to tread into the heart of Big Surfing's darkness like no other and he does so with aplomb, using incisive strokes to cleave wide the illusion that surfing is a happy-go-lucky, apolitical, pastime with a "leave no footprints" ethos.
Within the pages of EIW, we meet the true face of Big Surfing, one that will surely leave the reader with a deeper understanding of how and why such a beloved activity has been warped for profit and power. If you love surfing, read this book. Then give it to all your friends who love surfing.
June 17, 2021
Was given this as assigned reading for one of my classes, however, I actually really enjoyed this book. It dives into an EXTREMELY niche subject, politics and how it relates to the surfing world. I had no idea how political surf culture has been throughout history, and I enjoyed reading about it. Very lindy and comfy book to pick up and read, and goes over some pretty neat stuff.
July 15, 2020
Of all sports, surfing is probably one that many of us see as having, at best, muted politics. Part of this is the result, I suspect, of the sport’s slacker image – it doesn’t need to be Jeff Spicoli, it is a sport where its practitioners can spend the entire day on the edge of the ‘playing area’ waiting for the waves to develop. Part, and perhaps a bigger part, is the widespread view that sport is pretty apolitical anyway (leaving aside the mundane acceptance of sports’ associations with nations, for instance). Scott Laderman’s engaging political history of surfing shows just how wrong that presumption is.
The analysis is built around five themes highlighting both imperial relations and aspirations and the changes in global capitalism: the Americanisation of surfing (that is, its appropriation from Hawai’i); surfing, diplomacy and image of America; imperialism, Indonesia and myths of paradise surfing; the struggle against apartheid; industrialisation and commodification. Each of these merits its own chapter. Laderman animates these themes in rich and exciting ways: he is a surf-insider so brings to the analysis a critical engagement with surf cultures and ways of being, but he is also an historian and international relations scholar so has the methodological approaches and rigour of those disciplines. The result is a discussion of surfing of its history and politics that debunks the banalities of the apolitical outlook and depicts the sport as a site of social, cultural and political contest.
He has successfully woven through his analysis a close attention imperial and colonial politics, to the notion of ‘soft power’ (before we called it soft power), to the contextualisation of sport politics in global politics and to the shifting global balances associated with decolonisation and the image and recognition of the Third World. These, in themselves, make for rich reading – the seemingly naïve ‘exploration’ of Indonesia in a search for ‘pristine’ surf spots in the wake of Suharto’s murderous coup and the US support for Indonesia and a bulwark against domino theory of ‘communist takeover’ of South East Asia takes on a new meaning when these are juxtaposed with additional commentary on the myths of the submissive, compliant, unpolluted Indonesian people. The American and Australian surfer invasion of the 1970s can be seen as sanitising the régime that had, concurrently, killed Australian journalists covering its invasion of East Timor.
At one level, the analysis of the first half of the book is based in the obvious but often overlooked point: you can’t ignore context. While this is true, there is more going on here than this banality. Laderman is very good on ‘soft power’, for instance in the way the presence of surf culture artefacts in the US pavilion at Expo70, the global industrial and cultural fair in Osaka played on images of cool, on Gidget and Beach Boys to present a particularly sanitised image of the USA at odds with its role as the global policeman. He is also good at showing, more implicitly than explicitly, the ways that surfing’s business and cultural corporate actors worked in and alongside this tendency to national global power. Amid all this construction of power, he is also adept at drawing out the pockets of dissent.
These pockets then set up the second half of the analysis where surfing’s political history becomes much more contested. Despite the small scale critique of surf tourism as cultural imperialism, the change came with the open discussions of politics of surfing in apartheid-era South Africa. Through the 1970s and 1980s, as surfing developed a global touring competitive aspect the sport came up against the anti-apartheid boycott movement, working to isolate apartheid South Africa and bring about the end of White minority rule. Here is surfing politics as activism, and an activism well beyond the green politics of organisations like the Waverider Foundation, who do great environmental work but act in their own interests to protect the waves: athletes, especially professional athletes, who boycotted South Africa acted against their interests in terms of their financial well-being and their annual global rankings. Laderman is good on this and very good on the debates, disagreements and difficulties within the global surf community.
In the picture he paints of surfing’s political history, the activism of the anti-apartheid era then runs up against the problematic commodification of the contemporary political economy of surfing as an industry, which he unpacks in two ways – the sport’s financialisation affecting athletes, and the commodification of experience (as he calls it) through the spread of surf culture products outside the surfing practice community, and the development of ‘surf’ products that have nothing to do with that practice community. It is in this discussion and the subsequent exploration of surf-based activism that the practice community Laderman grants us access to is exposed as complex, contradictory and fraught with tension and disagreement in incredibly mundane ways – as we’d expect of pretty much any of sports’ practice communities.
This is a great book, the rewrites and challenges many of the ways we understand this slacker-sport’s past and present. I would have liked a little more of the internal community tensions to have been drawn out – but it is likely that the evidence and sources for those are hard to come by, if not non-existent. It is the kind of sports history that grounds its analysis in both sport practice and the long run developments of imperialism and global capitalism that we need more of.
The analysis is built around five themes highlighting both imperial relations and aspirations and the changes in global capitalism: the Americanisation of surfing (that is, its appropriation from Hawai’i); surfing, diplomacy and image of America; imperialism, Indonesia and myths of paradise surfing; the struggle against apartheid; industrialisation and commodification. Each of these merits its own chapter. Laderman animates these themes in rich and exciting ways: he is a surf-insider so brings to the analysis a critical engagement with surf cultures and ways of being, but he is also an historian and international relations scholar so has the methodological approaches and rigour of those disciplines. The result is a discussion of surfing of its history and politics that debunks the banalities of the apolitical outlook and depicts the sport as a site of social, cultural and political contest.
He has successfully woven through his analysis a close attention imperial and colonial politics, to the notion of ‘soft power’ (before we called it soft power), to the contextualisation of sport politics in global politics and to the shifting global balances associated with decolonisation and the image and recognition of the Third World. These, in themselves, make for rich reading – the seemingly naïve ‘exploration’ of Indonesia in a search for ‘pristine’ surf spots in the wake of Suharto’s murderous coup and the US support for Indonesia and a bulwark against domino theory of ‘communist takeover’ of South East Asia takes on a new meaning when these are juxtaposed with additional commentary on the myths of the submissive, compliant, unpolluted Indonesian people. The American and Australian surfer invasion of the 1970s can be seen as sanitising the régime that had, concurrently, killed Australian journalists covering its invasion of East Timor.
At one level, the analysis of the first half of the book is based in the obvious but often overlooked point: you can’t ignore context. While this is true, there is more going on here than this banality. Laderman is very good on ‘soft power’, for instance in the way the presence of surf culture artefacts in the US pavilion at Expo70, the global industrial and cultural fair in Osaka played on images of cool, on Gidget and Beach Boys to present a particularly sanitised image of the USA at odds with its role as the global policeman. He is also good at showing, more implicitly than explicitly, the ways that surfing’s business and cultural corporate actors worked in and alongside this tendency to national global power. Amid all this construction of power, he is also adept at drawing out the pockets of dissent.
These pockets then set up the second half of the analysis where surfing’s political history becomes much more contested. Despite the small scale critique of surf tourism as cultural imperialism, the change came with the open discussions of politics of surfing in apartheid-era South Africa. Through the 1970s and 1980s, as surfing developed a global touring competitive aspect the sport came up against the anti-apartheid boycott movement, working to isolate apartheid South Africa and bring about the end of White minority rule. Here is surfing politics as activism, and an activism well beyond the green politics of organisations like the Waverider Foundation, who do great environmental work but act in their own interests to protect the waves: athletes, especially professional athletes, who boycotted South Africa acted against their interests in terms of their financial well-being and their annual global rankings. Laderman is good on this and very good on the debates, disagreements and difficulties within the global surf community.
In the picture he paints of surfing’s political history, the activism of the anti-apartheid era then runs up against the problematic commodification of the contemporary political economy of surfing as an industry, which he unpacks in two ways – the sport’s financialisation affecting athletes, and the commodification of experience (as he calls it) through the spread of surf culture products outside the surfing practice community, and the development of ‘surf’ products that have nothing to do with that practice community. It is in this discussion and the subsequent exploration of surf-based activism that the practice community Laderman grants us access to is exposed as complex, contradictory and fraught with tension and disagreement in incredibly mundane ways – as we’d expect of pretty much any of sports’ practice communities.
This is a great book, the rewrites and challenges many of the ways we understand this slacker-sport’s past and present. I would have liked a little more of the internal community tensions to have been drawn out – but it is likely that the evidence and sources for those are hard to come by, if not non-existent. It is the kind of sports history that grounds its analysis in both sport practice and the long run developments of imperialism and global capitalism that we need more of.
June 11, 2021
A fun and enlightening history of surfing that places the global politics of pleasure at the center of the story. From surfaris in Suharto's Indonesia to faux-surfing brands like Hollister, Laderman shines a light on the hidden history behind this quintessential "American" pastime.
February 18, 2025
An eye-opening read on the not-so-great aspects of surfing. Exposed me to some darker truths about the sport. Made me reconsider surf tourism, competitive surfing, and the surf industry in general. A must-read for those who engage in the sport thinking that it ascends ethics and politics.
December 28, 2014
Big Business and Corporate Action Sport Goliaths strongly urge you not to read the truths behind the industrialization of surfing.
I loved this expose' on the deeper historical significances of land acquisition, political shifts, sphere of influence and counterculture exposure
of what it means to follow the "Surfing Machine". It brought me to understand politics like apartheid, humanitarian issues, environmental issues,
gender equality and other conflicts that are collateral damage from the mere pleasure seeking past time. It forever changed how I view and participate in "The Sport of Kings". I highly recommend this easy read for anyone, surfer or not. There is a lot to be said for the human species in this well written book. Scott Laderman is a warrior for truth!
I loved this expose' on the deeper historical significances of land acquisition, political shifts, sphere of influence and counterculture exposure
of what it means to follow the "Surfing Machine". It brought me to understand politics like apartheid, humanitarian issues, environmental issues,
gender equality and other conflicts that are collateral damage from the mere pleasure seeking past time. It forever changed how I view and participate in "The Sport of Kings". I highly recommend this easy read for anyone, surfer or not. There is a lot to be said for the human species in this well written book. Scott Laderman is a warrior for truth!
February 19, 2014
This is an excellent book. Laderman clearly loves surfing, but he is able to take a critical look at the globalization of surfing in the 20th century. If you care about surfing, you should read this book.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews