ABSTRACT
Surfing the oceans’ waves has inspired an aesthetically oriented (even hedonistic) lifestyle in dedicated practitioners since its renaissance at the turn of the twentieth century. It is not the only leisure activity to elicit this kind of response, but there is clearly something about surfing and its subculture that is emblematic of the dialectics at work/play in contemporary social change. In Future Shock Alvin Toffler described the surfing subculture as ‘… a signpost pointing to the future’ (1970: 263) and in more recent times surfing has become a metaphor for dealing with the uncertainties, opportunities and dangers of a postmodernizing society (Beck et al 2003).
