ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the shifting context within which surfing subcultures have been surveyed and discussed. All subcultures start off with an articulation phase, in which ‘a group of actors piece together a new life style’. The chapter deals with the innovation management field – is partly based upon historical accounts of the rise of the ‘user innovation’ concept. A new set of corporate innovation practices is being institutionalized by ‘an increasingly sophisticated corporate vanguard which seems to be attempting to invent vitalist capitalism’. The chapter shows that the genre of presenting surfer communities as deviant and innovative was established by academic cultural studies, as well as by popular tongue-in-cheek renderings of surfing subcultures. The chapter discusses how sports studies accounts of ‘new sports’, conceived during the 1980s and 1990s, suggested that the gulf between the subterranean values and the workaday life could be bridged–that subcultural playfulness and enterprise could go hand in hand.
