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Channelling Oceanic Energy: Investigating intimacy among surfers and waves along Ireland’s Atlantic Coast David Whyte Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Anthropology University College London 2018 1 I, David Whyte, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that these have been properly referenced in the thesis. 2 Abstract This thesis examines the entangled relationships of humans, waves, and the wider nonhuman environment in surfing. It is based on an ethnographic study of surfing along the Atlantic coast of Ireland, and also on how these communities are tied to a global surfing imaginary via online magazines, digital swell forecasts, and international travel. The argument at the core of this thesis is that surfing describes a collection of practices which transforms humans into channels for Oceanic energy. This becoming is both what allows the human body and technology to make lives as surfers in the littoral environment, and also produces the practical context whereby Irish terrestrial sociality is transformed into Irish surfer sociality with its own rules, hierarchies, and environmental understandings. The thesis departs from established tendencies in anthropology, geography and popular literature to theorise the coast as a liminal/peripheral space that is distinct from ‘everyday’ life and in which social norms are relaxed, transformed or perhaps even absent. Instead, I develop an alternative ecological analysis of Irish surfing using surfers’ own concepts which examines how surfing practice refigures the coast as the centre of certain human lives while at the same time blurring conceptual and physical boundary lines which separate land, littoral and ocean. By going beyond a strictly materialist approach to examine the energies which animate material relations, the ecological explanation developed herein argues that an anthropological explanation of surfing social relations benefits from a thorough understanding of the various ways that people become affectively tied to environments through practice. 3 Impact Statement This thesis has significant impact in relation to the social scientific study of surfing, to anthropology in general, and outside academia. In relation to studies of surfing, it acts as a counterweight to the significant body of work that depicts surfing as an extraordinary, escapist activity which, as a coast- based phenomenon, takes place at the geographical and cultural peripheries of modern civilisation. Conversely, I theorise surfing as a something that becomes ordinary – a key part of the life-making process. Furthermore, rather than functioning as an escape from ‘normal’ life, social relations, and so on, surfing in fact presents an alternative, serious social space with at least as many norms and hierarchies as do the ‘rest’ of surfers’ lives. Finally, I critique analyses that characterise surfing spaces and characters as peripheral or liminal by claiming that this is a matter of perspective. To a non-surfer the coast is perhaps a liminal space, but surfers produce a set of concepts and practices which recast these spaces and characters as social and cultural centres, meaning that, from a surfing perspective, alternative spaces/characters (injured surfers, for example) become liminal. In relation to anthropology more generally, the critique of liminality theory that I develop herein has significant consequences. I point to the political nature of liminality theory, encapsulated in its definition of ‘normal’ social circumstances. I demonstrate that in prioritising analysis of the arresting effects that a transitory structure has upon the lives of individuals and their ability to live under ‘normal’ social conditions, theorists risk disempowering those individuals, thereby missing an opportunity to analyse the techniques and practices by which individuals invariably transform seemingly abnormal situations into meaningful social spaces. This academic impact has already been brought about through several conference papers and will be extended in the future through publication in scholarly journals. Finally, this thesis will bring about impact outside of academia through its engagement with the terms upon which intimacy is created between humans and the environment, and how environmentalist sentiments develop from these practice-specific intimacies. In the context of a 4 rapidly changing climate and increasing environmental ill health, this is most valuable. As people learn to surf they begin to value the unimpeded, unpolluted flow of coastal waters, while at the same time (somewhat paradoxically) taking part in leisure and consumption practices that increases the risk of coastal pollution. In collaboration with a surfer-run community farm, I intend on extending the potential positive environmental impact of this thesis by delivering a series of short public lectures at the farm to local surfers, surf instructors and other members of the community to recommend initiatives that would increase awareness of the ecological values and dangers of developing surfing along the Irish coast. 5 Acknowledgements I extend a sincere thank you to my supervisor Allen Abramson. Allen has been there since my first days as a Masters student at UCL. Always available and ever on my side, through him I always felt that I had a sympathetic, learned and welcoming connection to the teaching and administrative staff of the department. Without his critical commentary on all my work to date this thesis would not have been possible. I also thank Charles Stewart, my second supervisor for his detailed reading and commentary of a first draft version of this thesis, Nurit Bird-David for her useful comments which helped shape chapter two of the thesis, and Martin Holbraad and Danny Miller for running the ever-engaging “Trajectories of Anthropology Today” seminar in the department. Some of the analytical avenues explored in this project have been encountered here. Among the students at UCL I have many to thank. Being part of an engaging cohort of PhD students with such a diverse research agenda and a real hunger for anthropological knowledge has been the biggest treat of my time with UCL. All have been amazing, but Pauline, Stefan, Tess, and Hernando deserve special thanks. Also at UCL, I am indebted to a group of undergraduate students whom I had the pleasure of acting as their Teaching Assistant for the Introduction to Material Culture module at UCL over the course of my PhD. They were always engaged, excited and generally a great bunch to be able to spend time with and study anthropology together. My deepest thanks go to my family: To my parents for helping me every little bit of the way with endless encouragement and assistance that extends over my twenty-eight years, and not merely the course of a degree. To my sisters and brothers I am also grateful for all the encouragement and for giving me good reason to get back home from London as often as I could. Among the Irish surf community, I thank all who gave their time to help me in my research. Fergal Smith in Clare deserves to be mentioned by name. I also thank members of the West Coast Surf Club for giving me their time. Finally, I have to thank a small group of surfers who base themselves in 6 Cork but are to be found all over the Irish coast on a weekly basis. I thank them for taking me in, for teaching me to surf, to read forecasts, to be afraid, to be frustrated, to be full of joy, and above all, to appreciate the manifold ways that surfers are affected by the blowing of the wind across the sea. This research is dedicated to them. 7 Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................................... 3 Impact Statement ................................................................................................................................... 4 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................. 6 List of Figures ........................................................................................................................................ 11 Chapter 1: Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 15 Presentation of topic ........................................................................................................................ 15 1.1 Surfing clear of subject-oriented and liminal approaches .................................................... 18 1.1.1 Aesthetics, risk and the individual in surf studies ......................................................... 19 1.1.2 Liminal surfing ............................................................................................................... 22 1.2 Explaining surfing ecologically .............................................................................................. 28 1.2.1 Becoming channels for Oceanic energy ........................................................................ 31 1.3 The ecological products of Irish surfing ................................................................................ 37 1.3.1 Bodily-technological channels of Oceanic energy ........................................................ 37 1.3.2 Political Mobilisations ..................................................................................................

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