Cardiff University | Prifysgol Caerdydd ORCA
Online Research @ Cardiff 
WelshClear Cookie - decide language by browser settings

Defining the enviro-surf community as epistemic: The development of the World Surfing Reserve phenomenon.

Stoodley, Lyndsey 2020. Defining the enviro-surf community as epistemic: The development of the World Surfing Reserve phenomenon. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University.
Item availability restricted.

[thumbnail of Stoodley, L Thesis Resubmission (Final).pdf]
Preview
PDF - Accepted Post-Print Version
Download (6MB) | Preview
[thumbnail of Cardiff University Electronic Publication Form.] PDF (Cardiff University Electronic Publication Form.) - Supplemental Material
Restricted to Repository staff only

Download (261kB)

Abstract

As a common feature in littoral spaces around the world, modern surfing has grown to be heterogenous, mobile, and wildly popular. Alongside this rise in popularity is increasing pressure on the use of the surf zone from development, coastal management, high numbers of surfers, and other water users. This thesis explores the way in which a niche within the broader surfing community has responded to these pressures by shedding cultural stereotypes of ‘slacker’ or ‘beach bum’, to mobilise and create stewardship solutions for coastal and (surf)cultural protection. One such solution is the World Surfing Reserves programme, a novel form of coastal designation that seeks to protect both the liquid surfing space and the shoreside culture that serves it. Through the World Surfing Reserves example, this thesis charts the evolution of surfbreak protection and the consequential ordering and bordering of surf zones. In doing so, it argues that the key mobilisers of people and policy are those who make up the ‘enviro-surf community’. This community, it is argued, can best be understood as an epistemic entity (after Haas 1992a). Sharing common beliefs, values and goals, this group of experts in surfbreak protection exert an authority over this niche domain which provides opportunity to mobilise and emplace strategies to protect. In suggesting that World Surfing Reserves present a clear demonstration of how this community work in practice, this thesis then utilises the concepts of policy mobilities to explore the policies that are being generated, mobilised and mutated by multi-scalar enviro-surf networks. Drawing on empirical data from multi-site ethnographies, and an extended case study of the Gold Coast World Surfing Reserve, this research presents an examination of the consequences for the littoral zone, the surf community more broadly, and our understandings of political action and protection in surfing.

Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
Date Type: Completion
Status: Unpublished
Schools: Geography and Planning (GEOPL)
Subjects: G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > G Geography (General)
Uncontrolled Keywords: surfing; protected areas; epistemic communities; policy mobilities; water; networks
Funders: ESRC
Date of First Compliant Deposit: 15 March 2021
Last Modified: 15 Mar 2022 02:30
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/139794

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item Edit Item

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

View more statistics