Abstract

Surfers both cooperate and compete around a scarce natural resource – ocean waves suited for surfing – often with a fraught mix of motives and feelings, pro-social and anti-social. Much as surfers constantly adapt to a dynamic wave environment, their pro- and anti-social motives readily mix and shift, based on their interpretation of quickly changing context. What we learn from surfers is something materialistic focus on self-interest and realities of scarcity or abundance might de-emphasize or miss: a culture of interpretation and reasoning (e.g. ‘localism’) is as important in the formation of shifting pro- and anti-social attitudes as the material reality of wave scarcity or abundance itself.