All Men Must Surf

All men must surf | idrottsforum.
org 2019-03-28 08)01
All men must surf

Kalle Jonasson
Department of Sport Science, Linnaeus University, Sweden
In Francis Ford Coppolaʼs

Apocalypse now, in the famous
scene when Colonel Kilgore
expresses his love of the smell of
napalm in the morning, a couple of
soldiers are seen surfing while the
shore is set ablaze by a fighter plane
bomb raid. Another one of Kilgoreʼs
classical quotes from this scene
demonstrates how conquering the
waves on a surfboard is a symbolical
mirroring of the carnage on dry land:
If I say itʼs safe to surf this beach,
captain – itʼs safe to surf this beach.
Iʼm not afraid to surf this place, Iʼm
not afraid to surf this fucking place.
This scene perfectly symbolizes Belinda Wheaton

The Cultural Politics of Lifestyle Sports
Belinda Wheatonʼs point of 235 pages, paperback.
departure in her book The Cultural Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge 2013 (Routledge
Politics of Lifestyle Sports. Surfing, Critical Studes in Sport)
ISBN 978-0-415-47858-8
despite its non-disputable
indigenous origin, has been culturally appropriated by white westerners
during the last century and up till now. Eventually, this has turned not only
the sport itself, but also the whole of the ocean, into a white (male)
territory and prerogative. The struggle to keep the ocean a white
preserve has been fought symbolically, logistically and socially ever since
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All men must surf | idrottsforum.org 2019-03-28 08)01
surfing was popularized among European descendants in the US

between the world wars of the last century.
Wheaton now challenges this discourse by exploring several cases which

testify to the rich experiences and histories of instances of lifestyle
sports practised outside of the global north and by other groups than
white middle-class men. This is framed theoretically as an exhibit of how
cultural politics are played out in the context of sports.
However, lifestyle sports differ a lot from its competitive, regular

counterparts. Such sports, referred to as ‘Californian sportsʼ by Pierre
Bourdieu, have increasingly been scrutinized over the past 20 years by
social scientists from an array of disciplines and perspectives. Wheaton
is one of the prominent scholars in this field and the present book further
establishes that fact. Such sports are often hedonistic practices in liminal
outdoor zones oriented towards individual growth and cultivating values
and norms of subcultures that oppose both quotidian life and the
competitive ethos of regular sports.
If the aim of the book is to look into the how, why, where and who of
lifestyle sports outside both the global north and groups of white, male,
middle-class men, the theoretical departure is a bricolage of sundry
schools, strands and concepts. The cultural studies movement is an
important source to Wheaton and she doesnʼt shy away from addressing
its fetishizing of subcultures. The apparent pitfall of focussing
subcultures as countercultural (an established cultural studiesʼ tradition)
is that it all crumbles when the subcultural representatives continue with
their practices, while also succumbing to processes such as capitalism
and neoliberalism. And this is where the eclectic theoretical profusion
comes in handy for Wheaton. Other important sources are Bourdieu,
Foucault, Giddens and the Physical Cultural Studies movement.
The solution to this conundrum – i.e. how can countercultures keep their
oppositional position intact while also explicitly and willingly accepting
capitalist and neoliberal values? – is two-fold, as I see it. There are surely
other aspects of it, but these two are of particular interest.
Wheaton is, in other words (which is all too

common in contemporary ahabemia, sorry,
academia), no Captain Ahab, chasing a great
white male, sorry, whale, haunting the waves.
One is that such cultures (whether with counter-, sub- or neither of those
prefixes) are always under construction by the different voices that both
challenge and reproduce the alleged logic of the practice. This is evident
throughout the book, both as a point of departure and by the array of
terms referring to the complexity of such sports. A typical quote to
demonstrate the tension of contradictions that Wheaton wants to explore
is found in the chapter on previous research:
Furthermore, despite these shared characteristics, lifestyle sports take

multiple and increasingly fragmented forms, drawing on a vast array of
narratives that are saturated with ambiguities and contradictions,
reflecting the multiple configurations of identity and boundary-crossing
practices characteristic of cultural processes in late modernity. (p.30)
But Wheaton isnʼt only writing such terms. She also gets her hands dirty
trying to demonstrate such contrasts. Methodologically, this is carried
out precisely by letting a plethora of voices within such cultures be
heard, whereby she avoids the more philosophical and symbolical
interpretations of such sports. This was particularly hard for me to read,
since the latter conceptual practice has been common for me as a sport
scholar. For example, parkour has been interpreted as a critique of the
way capitalism constrains movement through architecture. Following
Wheaton, this is one of the possible ways to understand parkour, but to
state that we must ask practitioners.
The other solution follows from the first, and it is more implicit in the text
(which is to say that it is my interpretation). The mere fact that we
ascribe symbolical meaning to such practices (such as: surfing is a

critique of the tedious life of the conform western society), is due to the
conformity of those having had the strongest voices in defining what the
culture is, namely white western middle-class men. To interpret a sport
as simply this or that, especially by academics that really ought to be
critical, amounts to confirming the symbolical role that hegemonic
groups ascribe to it.
Wheaton is, in other words (which is all too common in contemporary

ahabemia, sorry, academia), no Captain Ahab, chasing a great white
male, sorry, whale, haunting the waves. She simply sidesteps this and
looks for the other varieties in lifestyle sport practices. What say the
black voices of surfing? How can skateboarding foster wholesome and
virtuous values that contribute to society? How can parkour be said to
contribute to municipalities by creating a civic sense of solidarity? By
posing such questions, Wheaton effectuates her theoretical departure
and becomes a part of the cultural politics of lifestyle sport herself. Wary
of the risks of performing such a balance act, since research ought to
keep a distance in order not to be biased and carried out too normatively,
Wheaton states that she wants her studies to inform practices to become
more conscious about existing power asymmetries within them so that
they might open up and become more inclusive.
However, there is one influent normative current pervading the chapters

and cases of the book: the right to water. Not as in the right to drinking
water, but as in access to the ocean, the beaches and the waves.
Naturally, the three cases of surfing (The California beach; Surfing,
Identity and Race; Black surfing association) acknowledge this, but it also
surfaces in the case of street kids skateboarding in South Africa. Surely,
the case of parkour in Brighton, UK, doesnʼt address this, other than it
being based on an inquiry carried out in a coastal city.
Other than – what might be – Wheatonʼs own experiences of surfing,
which cautiously suggest that in surfing we are not only one with the
waves, but with each other, numerous accounts in the cases testify to
that equality, solidarity, meaningfulness and joy is a, however temporary,
influential state that could be reached in the realm of the sea. Only for
the purpose of demonstrating how non-ambiguously this is
communicated in the book, one could perhaps call this normative
position as one promoting ‘aqualityʼ, to coin a term: equality, deliberation
and erasure of power structures by being in the water in together.[1]
By posing such questions, Wheaton effectuates her theoretical departure

and becomes a part of the cultural politics of lifestyle sport herself.
One of the most striking features of all cases in Wheatonʼs treatise is how
systematically minorities have been excluded from the beach over the
last century and how access to the waves has been a white privilege,
regardless of whether we talk about San Diego or Durban. Wheaton
succinctly demonstrates how this is effectuated on so many levels at the
same time: Mid 20th century Hollywood movies on surfing displayed no
blacks in waves; Apartheid reserved the most accessible and safest
beaches to whites; bus and trolley lines that led to the beach put
restrictions on bringing your surfing board, hindering black people
without cars to reach the brine (some stations were also placed far from
the richest and whitest sea venues and thereby actualizing what
Wheaton refers to as the ‘racializing of spaceʼ and ‘spatializing of raceʼ).
All these instances might, then, with the suggested term above, be seen
as obstacles for aquality to be reached and performed.
The emphasis on surfing in three of the five cases enables a rich and
deep understanding of this particular lifestyle sport, but is it enough to
be able to talk about lifestyle sports in general with such an unbalanced
material? Surely, the cases of parkour and skateboarding display
interesting samples of how lifestyle sports could support the
marginalized in order for them to become stronger voices in civic society,
but they weigh lightly in comparison to the depth of Wheatonʼs

knowledge of the surfing community and history. Wheaton indeed
discusses whether or not being an insider/outsider is a superficial
problem in ethnographic research. Unfortunately, this doesnʼt get
properly resolved and the three (out of five) cases on surfing could be
seen as serving to acknowledge that she really is more familiar to surfing
and not to the others. One of the strengths of the anthology
Understanding Lifestyle Sports, which Wheaton edited a decade ago,
was just that, the plethora of practices.
The objections and critical points I have brought up in this review,

however, does not deflect from the merits of Wheatonʼs study, which is
clearly organized, well-informed, well written, theoretically fine-tuned
and methodologically precise. I would recommend it, not only to scholars
and students with an interest in the particular sports, but also to those
focussing the interplay of race, space, bodies and the ocean.
Copyright © Kalle Jonasson 2017
[1] The heading of this review, “All men must surf”, is a wordplay
with the dictum that is repeated constantly in the fantasy series
Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin: All men must serve, all men
must die. My light-hearted variation of the ominous phrase is an
acknowledgement of what I perceive as an implicit message and a
normative undercurrent in Wheatonʼs book, and which I for the
purpose of making that point clear has termed ʼaqualityʼ.

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All men must surf | idrottsforum.

org 2019-03-28 08)01

All men must surf

In Francis Ford Coppolaʼs

This scene perfectly symbolizes Belinda Wheaton

surfing was popularized among European descendants in the US

Wheaton now challenges this discourse by exploring several cases which

However, lifestyle sports differ a lot from its competitive, regular

Wheaton is, in other words (which is all too

Furthermore, despite these shared characteristics, lifestyle sports take

ascribe symbolical meaning to such practices (such as: surfing is a

Wheaton is, in other words (which is all too common in contemporary

However, there is one influent normative current pervading the chapters

Other than – what might be – Wheatonʼs own experiences of surfing,

By posing such questions, Wheaton effectuates her theoretical departure

but they weigh lightly in comparison to the depth of Wheatonʼs

The objections and critical points I have brought up in this review,

Copyright © Kalle Jonasson 2017

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