Exploring Critical Alternatives for Youth Development through Lifestyle Sport: Surfing and Community Development in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Abstract

While competition-based team sports remain dominant in community and sport-for-development programs, researchers are exploring the value of alternative, less "sportized" activities such as lifestyle/action sports. In this paper, we explore the ways in which surfing is being used in development programs in Aotearoa/New Zealand, examining the perceived social benefits and impact. Our methods involved: (a) mapping the range of surfing projects; and (b) 8 in-depth interviews with program personnel. Widespread conviction in the positive developmental benefits of surfing was evident, and that surfing had a "special" capacity to reform or heal those who participate in it. However, the ways in which individuals' self-developments were promoted appear to be following the traditional sport/youth development path. They focus on policies aimed at improved life chances, equipping youth with the tools for self-improvement and self-management, inculcating self-governance and self-reliance. However, a counter narrative co-existed, highlighting surfing as a freeing experience, which, rather than restoring social order, works to instigate a personal transformation or awakening. Despite the range of challenges presented by surfing as a tool for positive development, surfing presents a potentially "critical alternative" which if sport-for-development programs are to be a form of social change, we should remain open to exploring.

“When I Go There, I Feel Like I Can Be Myself.” Exploring Programme Theory within the Wave Project Surf Therapy Intervention

“…It must be noted that general participation in surfing outside of intervention settings has not always been identified as a safe space. Several studies highlight how surfing is challenging for beginners, women and people of colour due to a hypermasculine and overtly competitive culture [47,48,49]. This issue was not evident within this study although there could be a range of reasons for this including the age of participants or reliance on the intervention’s continuation programme rather than independent surfing due to own challenges faced.…”

“We Are Prisoners in Our Own Homes”: Connecting the Environment, Gender-Based Violence and Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights to Sport for Development and Peace in Nicaragua

“…For example, Stoddart [17] reflects on the ecological irony, or "the detachment between abstract values and embodied behaviour" (p. 20), evident in the ways that skiers in British Columbia negotiate their Apart from Willis' account of MYSA's work, other SDP-focused research considers the concept of sustainability in and through 'action sports', such as surfing. For example, Wheaton et al's work on surfing-based action SDP programs demonstrates how program participants may struggle to maintain long-term and independent "ecological sensibilities to the sea and surf" through such initiatives [25] (p. 12). Others contend that promoting environmentalism in or through sport for development is a key cornerstone of promoting peace, particularly when thinking of sport as a medium through which to address cultural and structural forms of violence (e.g., [22]), a point which is taken up in greater detail in the latter half of this paper.…”

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Participation in Organized Sports and Self-Organized Physical Activity: Associations with Developmental Factors

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