Decolonizing Sustainable Surf Tourism: Alternatives to Development, Surfer Subjectivity and Surfscape Commons Governance

The theoretical and empirical research presented in this thesis examines decolonizing approaches to surf tourism through postdevelopment and diverse economic frames. These critical frameworks challenge conventional neoliberal approaches to sustainable surf tourism and explore the potential for alternatives to development, postcapitalist surfer subjectivities and surfscape commons governance to advance decolonial surf tourism research and practice. Engaging with poststructuralist and Marxian currents in postdevelopment scholarship, which confront the Western hegemony of sustainable development discourse for its continuity with global capitalism and modernization (Escobar, 1995, 1996; Cameron & Gibson, 2005; Gibson-Graham, 2005; Esteva, 2009; Klein & Morreo, 2019; Kothari et al, 2019), the research presented here critiques the surf tourism-for-sustainable development model common to the academic-practitioner field of sustainable surf tourism (Buckley, 2002a, 2002b; Ponting et al., 2005; Martin & Assenov, 2012; O'Brien & Ponting, 2013; Ponting & O’Brien, 2014; Borne, 2015; Borne & Ponting, 2015; Porter et al., 2015; Towner, 2015). This critique highlights the neocolonial and socioecological consequences associated with the irreconcilable policy objectives of economic growth-based models promoting both conservation and development through the proposed regulation of common pool environmental resources and leveraging of surf tourism revenue as a poverty alleviation strategy (Ruttenberg & Brosius, 2017, 2020). Drawing on these conceptual frames, the primary research objectives for this study were to critically analyze existing forms of “sustainable” surf tourism and explore possibilities for developing decolonial, assets-based alternatives to existing models of surf tourism development. Linking discussions of power, knowledge and agency to non-Eurocentric, self-determined, and intersectional narratives of subjectivity, economy, development and wellbeing in surfing culture and tourism (Said, 1987; Escobar, 1995; Quijano, 2000; Wynter, 2003; Mignolo & Walsh, 2018; Harcourt, 2019), this study thus centered decolonial and diverse economic, community-based approaches to socioecological wellbeing and surf tourism governance. Seeking potential “lines of flight” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1980) beyond the postdevelopment critique of sustainable surf tourism and toward identifying decolonial alternatives to neoliberal surf tourism governance, the research discussed here engages with a postcapitalist lens on surfer subjectivities, surf tourism community economies and a multi-perspective framework on the surfscape commons. This lens offers a means of: a) analyzing the postcapitalist potential and limitations of transcending the neoliberal and colonial-patriarchal norms of modern surf culture (see Hough-Snee & Eastman, 2017a); b) recognizing critical translocalisms (Comer, 2010) and diverse modes of ‘commoning’ the surfscape (Gibson-Graham, 2006; Gibson-Graham et al., 2016; 2013) as potential spaces for an emerging emancipatory politics in surf tourism governance; and c) exploring alternatives to development in surf tourism through diverse economic frames and assets-based participatory action research as decolonial postdevelopment praxis. Through these explorations and analyses, principal theoretical contributions from this study include: i) the decolonizing critique of sustainable surf tourism challenging neoliberal models of surf tourism governance while advancing postcapitalist approaches to diverse economic, community-based development alternatives in surf tourism research and practice; ii) considerations of certain postcapitalist surfer subjectivities and critical expressions of surfscape localism as potentially revolutionary modes of resistance to, and emancipation within, the occupied surfscapes of what scholars have identified as the neoliberal, colonial-patriarchal “state of modern surfing” and its attendant surf tourism industrial complex (Hough-Snee & Eastman, 2017b; Gilio-Whitaker, 2017; Ruttenberg & Brosius, 2019); iii) the identification of postcapitalist translocalisms (Comer, 2010) founded on networks of freedom and self-determination in “the here and now” (Gibson-Graham’s, 2008, p. 659) as already-existing modes of surf tourism governance and beyond-postmodern identity politics linked to decolonizing and surfeminist movements in surfing culture. Empirical research in case study communities in Costa Rica explored existing surf tourism governance models and engaged with postcapitalist approaches to development alternatives in community-based surf tourism. Field research employed ethnographic methods including participant observation and poststructuralist participatory action research in and alongside surf tourism communities. Reflexivity provided a means of analyzing the field research experience across intersectional axes of gender, race, and class related to researcher positionality in decolonial surf tourism research. Together, these empirical contributions offer insight into the potential for decolonizing surf tourism studies through critical postdevelopment and postcapitalist conceptual frames and related diverse economies field methods. Research outcomes point toward a horizon for postcapitalist surfer subjectivities, alternatives to development, and critical approaches to surfscape commons governance to transgress what critical surf scholars have identified as the neocolonial “state of modern surfing” and its attendant “surf tourism-industrial complex” in both theory and practice (Hough-Snee & Eastman, 2017b; Gilio-Whitaker, 2017). Specific empirical contributions of this research include: i) furthering postcapitalist explorations into critical modes of “commoning” the surfscape (Gibson-Graham et al., 2016) and assets-based, diverse economic alternatives to development in surf tourism communities as viable decolonial praxis in critical surf tourism studies; ii) reflexive intersectional inquiry into researcher positionality to support future researcher considerations for field work in decolonial surf tourism studies; and iii) field-based insight into the potential for diverse economic frames and critical research methods to decolonize surf tourism studies beyond capitalocentric surf tourism-for-sustainable development approaches and surfscape imaginaries otherwise occupied by the state of modern surfing. Chapter I presents a critical overview of surf tourism, conservation and development under neoliberal governance in Costa Rica, drawing from field research among the local surfing community of Witch’s Rock in Santa Rosa National Park. Chapter II functions as a literature review situating the non-essentialist postcapitalist lens on surfer subjectivities within the broader milieu of coloniality-patriarchy in the state of modern surfing. Together, these two chapters provide the theoretical framing for the decolonizing critique of surf tourism governance and engage with diverse economic concepts to posit examples of beyond-modern surfing subjectivities and alternative development possibilities in surfing tourism and culture. Chapter III takes this framing a step further through its engagement with the concept of occupied surfscapes, exploring postcapitalist approaches to the surfscape commons and translocal surfing subjectivities as critical sites of resistance to the state of modern surfing and its attendant surf tourism industrial complex. Chapters IV and V move this discussion on postcapitalist possibilities in surf tourism governance toward empirical examples of decolonial surf tourism research and praxis, sharing lessons gleaned from employing community economies methods in the field and reflexively analyzing experiences of “multiplex” surfer-researcher positionality in fieldwork, respectively (Sato, 2004). Together, these theoretical and empirical explorations center actually-existing possibilities of decolonizing surf tourism by making visible the ways in which surfers and surf tourism communities can enact, and already are enacting, decolonial alternatives in surf tourism governance and modern surfing culture.