Tag: Michael James Roberts

Edited by Michael Roberts, Kristin Lawler, and David P. Cline, Roll and Flow: The Cultural Politics of Skateboarding and Surfing (SDSU Press) takes the widespread participation of skateboarders and surfers in the Black Lives Matter movement as a catalyst to reconsider the significance of the cultural politics of surfing and skateboarding. We asked historian Matthew L. McDowell for a review. He found an “intriguing collection” combatting an ingrained cultural stereotype of skateboarders and surfers as uncaring and apolitical, a book likely to serve as a reference point in the field for years to come.

Academics in various disciplines are writing about sport. Sport in Society is a multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary forum for academics to discuss the growing relationship of sport to significant areas of modern life. The Forum Editor’s pick from the current issue: Skateboarding and contested public space in Portrush, Northern Ireland: exploring tensions between resortification and DIY space-claiming through co-creative methodology by Jim Donaghey & Slaine Browne (open access).

In Sander Hölsgens’ and Brian Glenney’s new book Skateboarding and the Senses: Skills, Surfaces, and Spaces a new perspective on skateboarding is presented, centred on the senses, skill acquisition, embodiment, and the concept of “city craft”. According to our reviewer Michael Roberts, the book makes a crucial intervention in skateboard studies, and the definition of skateboarding as a craft is key to their intervention. This is a must read for interested in skateboard studies and the cultural politics of lifestyle sports more generally.

In his new book Waikīkī Dreams: How California Appropriated Hawaiian Beach Culture (University of Illinois Press), Patrick Moser uses surfing to open a door on the cultural appropriation practiced by Depression-era Californians against a backdrop of settler colonialism and white nationalism. Michael Roberts is our knowledgeable reviewer, and he is impressed and appreciative of Moser’s grand effort to fill embarrassing gaps in our understanding of the role of colonialism and racism in the historical relationship between Hawaiian and Californian surfing.

The International Review for the Sociology of Sport is a peer reviewed academic journal. Its main purpose is to disseminate research and scholarship on sport throughout the international academic community. The journal publishes research articles of varying lengths, from standard length research papers to shorter reports and commentary, as well as book and media reviews.