New Books in Popular Culture Michael James Roberts et al., "Roll and Flow: The Cultural Politics of Skateboarding and Surfing" (San Diego State UP, 2024)
Mar 6, 2026
Michael James Roberts, sociology professor and editor; Kristin Lawler, surfing studies scholar and editor; Jarrett Rose, community health researcher exploring psychedelics in surf culture. They discuss how skateboarding joined surf politics after 2020 protests. They trace surfing’s anti-work rhythms, skateboarding as urban resistance, and psychedelics’ role in shaping surf consciousness.
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Board Cultures Became Political During Summer 2020
- Skateboarding and surfing became central to a new edited volume after skateboarders and surfers visibly participated in Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.
- Rolling for Rights in San Diego (1000+ skaters) and surfers' paddle-outs showed board cultures as political actors, not apolitical leisure groups.
Skateboarding Produces Flow Not Abstract Space
- Skateboarding remakes urban space by privileging flow, play, and pleasure against capitalism's abstract, segregated spatial logic.
- Theoretical framing draws on Lefebvre, Situationists, and skateboard filmmakers (Flanantes) who perform psychogeographic dérives in cities like São Paulo.
Surfing Creates Alternative Temporalities
- Surfing reshapes time by enabling alternative temporalities that counter capitalist clock-time, drawing on Bergson and Lefebvre critiques of Kant.
- The authors link surfing's 'flow' to ontological time (durée) where past and present contract into lived experience.
