David Whyte: Belonging in the Ocean: Surfing, ocean power, and saltwater citizenship in Ireland Belonging in the Ocean: Surfing, ocean power, and saltwater citizenship in Ireland David Whyte Ballyhoura Development,
[email protected] Abstract In 2016, the Trump International Golf Links and Hotel in southwest Ireland sought per- mission to erect a boulder wall along the entire length of a beach to protect its golf course from erosion. This beach happens to be home to a good-quality surf break and, accord- ingly, local and international surfers quickly mobilised resistance to the plan. This paper investigates how Irish surfers’ relationship with different water flows have been (re)pro- ducing and transforming these political narratives, both in relation to this dispute and in the State more generally in the 2014-2018 period. Through their politicised associations with waves, Irish surfers enact “saltwater citizenship”, a political status that grounds its legitimacy not only on its relationship with state power but also (and primarily) with ocean power. I explore how this specific form of citizenship has three defining features: 1) It multiplies authorities of political legitimation; 2) its struggles against Irish state-cor- porate entanglements take place predominantly as right-of-access and right-of-ownership disputes; 3) because it is based on surf-specific notions of belonging and relies on con- temporary global flows of information and people, it disarticulates and reconfigures ele- ments of citizenship (territoriality and entitlements, for instance) in ways that complicate traditional distinctions between localism and cosmopolitanism. KEYWORDS: Ireland, saltwater citizenship, surfing, water, belonging Introduction During the winter of 2013/2014, the West of Ireland experienced a particularly intense storm season.