The niche field of critical surf studies examines localism as a ubiquitous phenomenon wherein experiences of place and belonging are negotiated through surfers’ differentiated positioning relative to surfing’s cultural imaginaries and geographical territories, or ‘surfscapes’. Beyond conventional explorations of localism as a response to common pool resource dilemmas provoked by overcrowding of wave resources, critical perspectives account for power dynamics related to race, class, and gender in contested surfing space produced through Global North/South relationships within the colonial-patriarchal foundations of global surf tourism. This body of critical surf tourism literature acknowledges diverse localisms as enacting entitlement and/or resistance in occupied surfscapes built on historical legacies of structural violence and settler colonialism. Engaging with novel frameworks of communal governmentality, commoning and translocalism in Global South surf tourism communities, critical surf tourism scholarship suggests that certain localisms represent subversive modes of commons governance and/or emancipatory politics in occupied surfscapes. The state-of-the-art narrative review of critical surf studies concepts offered here centers localism in surf tourism contexts as a lens for recognizing critical surf tourism studies as its own nascent subfield of inquiry in sport tourism geographies.
","author_name":"Tourism Geographies"}