The foamy politics of surfing in Hawaii

Whereas capitalism is a terrestrial or land-centric onto/epistemology that understands the world in terms of solid discrete entities easily set into dichotomies, a 'seascape' offers an amphibian and corporeal understanding of the environment. The body becomes the main medium for an oceanic literacy based on the kinetics and sensorial affinities of the surfer or sailor in relationship to water. Activities relating to water and involving nudity were considered immoral by missionaries. [...]missionary politics abolished Kanaka (native hawaiian) sacred practices of surfing. [...]with surf chants and board construction rites, sport gods, and other sacred elements removed, the once ornate sport of surfing was stripped of much to its cultural plummage' [Finney and Houston, 1996 in Ingersoll, 2016: 48].