In this talk, I will examine surfing as a countercultural practice and will consider the ways in which it constitutes a lived refusal of the logic of capital. I will look at several contemporary and historical iterations of the surf image in popular culture to think through its political significance, and will survey the state of the new field of “surf studies.”

Kristin Lawler is Professor of Sociology at the College of Mount Saint Vincent in New York City. She is author of The American Surfer, published in 2011, and co-editor of the forthcoming volume Roll and Flow: the Political Ontology of Surf and Skate. Her work appears in numerous edited collections, including Feminism and the Early Frankfurt School (forthcoming); Class: the Anthology; Nietzsche and Critical Social Theory; Bohemias in Southern California; and The Critical Surf Studies Reader. She is a contributing member of the editorial board of the journal Situations: Project of the Radical Imagination and a member of the board of directors of the Institute for the Radical Imagination.