Interaction, Attentiveness, and Intimacy: Communicating with Waves in Surf Tourism

Abstract

Surf tourism places are comprised not only of surfing activities but a myriad of actions and interactions on land and at sea of which surfing and surf tourism business are a part. However, surf tourism literature has rarely emphasized the presences of other modes of encountering and interacting with waves, such as fishing and seafaring, especially among local inhabitants. This article puts the emphasis on a broader everyday busyness of living in a surf tourism place, by paying attention to the various ways local people attend to and interact with waves in which they inhabit. The everyday of surf tourism is explored through field research conducted at Ebay, a typical surf tourism place located in Siberut, Mentawai Islands, Indonesia. Drawing on more-than-human and relational ontologies, the mundane relationalities between waves and humans are analyzed as everyday practices of attentiveness and interaction, through which the entangled actors—humans and waves—further cocreate the uneasy notion of intimacy. In addition to challenging the "Nirvanification" of surf tourism places by narrating less touristic and more mundane, everyday situations involving waves and humans, this study also furthers our understanding of communication and culture by showcasing the possibilities of understanding local interaction between humans and nonhumans in a tourism context.