In this very special episode, we’re joined by co-host and Co-Founder of Surf Park Central, Dr. Jess Ponting. Jess is also a Professor of Sustainable Surf Tourism at San Diego State, and the Co-Founder of Stoke, a sustainability certification organization. This episode will be the first of a variety from our INSIDER series, featuring long-form expert interviews conducted by Jess along with industry leaders and change-makers. In today’s episode, Jess is joined by a friend and colleague, Dr. Mike Roberts Professor of Sociology, to discuss the evolution of surfing culture in the context of surf pools.
Waves of Simulation: Arguing authenticity in an era of surfing the hyperreal. The third generation of surf parks have had an enormous impact on surf culture since they came online in 2015. Surfing culture has always been underpinned by romantic notions of nature and the surfer’s relationship to it, but now perfect waves have been decoupled from nature and entered the realm of the hyperreal. This episode explores what it all means for surf culture. Dr. Jess Ponting and Dr. Michael Roberts invoke theorists Jean Baudrillard and Walter Benjamin in a riveting conversation about surf parks and their impacts and implications for surfing and surf culture.

About Dr. Mike Roberts

Dr. Mike Roberts’s research and teaching areas include Critical theory, the American labor movement, race-class intersectionality, mass media and popular culture, the cultural history of rock-and-roll, science and technology studies, and the history and culture of surfing.  He did his graduate work in sociology and cultural studies at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York, where he received his PhD in 2005.  His book, Tell Tchaikovsky the News: Rock’n’Roll, the Labor Question, and the Musicians’ Union (Duke University Press, 2014) was nominated for the Mary Douglas Prize for “best book” by the Sociology of Culture Section of the American Sociological Association.  You can find his book here: https://www.dukeupress.edu/Tell-Tchaikovsky-the-News/

His latest work includes an edited book titled Class: the Anthology (forthcoming, Wiley-Blackwell), and an article titled “Turning the Race/Class Dialectic on Its Head,” published in the journal Race & Class (October, 2015). Other articles of his have appeared in the journals Rethinking Marxism, Popular Music, Mobilization: The International Quarterly of Social Movement Research, Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, Music in Arts and Action, and The Sociological Quarterly. Since joining the Sociology faculty in the fall of 2004, Dr. Roberts has won two teaching awards, as well as creating several new courses, including graduate seminars on a variety of topics, and an undergraduate course titled, the “Culture and History of Surfing.” In his spare time Dr. Roberts enjoy surfing with colleagues, friends and students as well as playing the bass in a rock-and-roll cover band.