Chris Gibson | University of Wollongong (original) (raw)
Books by Chris Gibson
Over the last forty years, surfing has emerged from its Pacific islands origins to become a globa... more Over the last forty years, surfing has emerged from its Pacific islands origins to become a global industry. Since its beginnings more than a thousand years ago, surfing’s icon has been the surfboard—its essential instrument, the point of physical connection between human and nature, body and wave. To a surfer, a board is more than a piece of equipment; it is a symbol, a physical emblem of cultural, social, and emotional meanings. Based on research in three important surfing locations—Hawai‘i, southern California, and southeastern Australia—this is the first book to trace the surfboard from regional craft tradition to its key role in the billion-dollar surfing business.
The surfboard workshops of Hawai‘i, California, and Australia are much more than sites of surfboard manufacturing. They are hives of creativity where legacies of rich cultural heritage and the local environment combine to produce unique, bold board designs customized to suit prevailing waves. The globalization and corporatization of surfing have presented small, independent board makers with many challenges stemming from the wide availability of cheap, mass-produced boards and the influx of new surfers. The authors follow the story of board makers who have survived these challenges and stayed true to their calling by keeping the mythology and creativity of board making alive. In addition, they explore the heritage of the craft, the secrets of custom board production, the role of local geography in shaping board styles, and the survival of hand-crafting skills.
From the olo boards of ancient Hawaiian kahuna to the high-tech designs that represent the current state of the industry, Surfing Places, Surfboard Makers offers an entrée into the world of surfboard making that will find an eager audience among researchers and students of Pacific culture, history, geography, and economics, as well as surfing enthusiasts.
Papers by Chris Gibson
Accounts of making as a social and economic practice, and as a process of material transformation... more Accounts of making as a social and economic practice, and as a process of material transformation, are accumulating both within and beyond geography. In this article, we turn our attention to how geographers have engaged viscerally with the labour process of making, by putting their own bodies to work, as makers themselves, or alongside those of research participants. Such embodied interventions extend academic understandings of the everyday, embodied accumulation of skill and tacit knowledge, as well as offering an alternative, methodologically transparent approach to nonrepresentational modes of writing. We review how geographers interested in making have found ways in which to deeply engage the field, often building on longstanding personal interests and auto‐ethnographic methods, in the face of pragmatic concerns for safety and security in the workplace, as well as the time constraints of the neoliberal academy. We conclude that the flourishing slow scholarship on geographies of making has opened up a productive portal through which to re‐connect work and the body. Deeper insights arise from implicating our labouring selves in both the making, as well as writing about making.
City, Culture and Society, 2017
Urban policy-makers have largely treated the cultural economy as either an appendage of a larger ... more Urban policy-makers have largely treated the cultural economy as either an appendage of a larger creative or knowledge-based economy or as a means of enhancing consumption. The result has been a focus on programs to attract highly educated and skilled professionals often at the expense of attention to workforce inequality, manual workers and skills, gentrification, and the displacement of small, independent manufacturing businesses. In the context of growing labour market inequality and deepening urban cultural schisms, this paper seeks to redirect urban and cultural policy toward a more progressive research and policy agenda centered on material cultural production. Our point of departure is to focus on the nascent intersection between the cultural economy and small manufacturing. This paper first provides a brief summary of the current approaches to urban policy and the cultural economy and the factors that have shaped policy decisions. Next, we discuss emerging attention around an alternative urban cultural policy agenda geared toward the cultural industries, small manufacturing, and craft-based production. Finally, we explore the relationships among cultural industries and small manufacturers and discuss the key research gaps and policy issues that will affect relationships and development oriented to cultural production and manufacturing at the city-region level.
Ethical Consumption: A Critical Introduction
Everybody needs clothing for warmth and protection; but clothing is much more than body covering.... more Everybody needs clothing for warmth and protection; but clothing is much more than body covering. This chapter contrasts arguments from the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School and poststructuralist/feminist cultural studies to understand and problematize the ethics of clothing consumption as fashion. Clothing is a basic manufacturing industry, one which drove the industrial revolution to meet the essential human need to be covered. But fashion is also a cultural industry, promoting particular forms of consumption as social practices, ...
Singapore Journal of Tropical …, Jan 1, 2009
Australian Geographer, Jan 1, 2010
This article examines remoteness and proximity as geographical conditions and metaphors. It stems... more This article examines remoteness and proximity as geographical conditions and metaphors. It stems from a large government-funded research project which sought to examine the extent and uniqueness of the creative industries in Darwin—a small but important city in Australia's tropical Top End region, and government and administration capital of the sparsely populated Northern Territory. In talking to creative artists from diverse fields about their work and inspiration, it became clear that geographical positionality was a key framing device through which people understood themselves and their relationships with others. Remoteness and proximity were tangible in the sense of physical distances (Darwin is remote from southern States, and yet proximate to Asia and Aboriginal country). But Darwin's location was also perceived and imagined, in cultural texts, in creative workers' discussions of Darwin in relation to the outside world, and in their sense of the aesthetic qualities of the city's creative output (particularly shaped by multicultural and Aboriginal influences). We develop our analysis from 98 interviews with creative workers and postal surveys returned by 13 festival organisers in Darwin. Qualities of distance, proximity, isolation and connection materially shape a political economy of creative industry production, and infuse how creative workers view their activities within networks of trade, exchange and mobility.
Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 2015
Dialogues in Human Geography, 2013
Dialogues in Human Geography, 2013
Cultural Industries and the Production of Culture, 1844
Over the last forty years, surfing has emerged from its Pacific islands origins to become a globa... more Over the last forty years, surfing has emerged from its Pacific islands origins to become a global industry. Since its beginnings more than a thousand years ago, surfing’s icon has been the surfboard—its essential instrument, the point of physical connection between human and nature, body and wave. To a surfer, a board is more than a piece of equipment; it is a symbol, a physical emblem of cultural, social, and emotional meanings. Based on research in three important surfing locations—Hawai‘i, southern California, and southeastern Australia—this is the first book to trace the surfboard from regional craft tradition to its key role in the billion-dollar surfing business.
The surfboard workshops of Hawai‘i, California, and Australia are much more than sites of surfboard manufacturing. They are hives of creativity where legacies of rich cultural heritage and the local environment combine to produce unique, bold board designs customized to suit prevailing waves. The globalization and corporatization of surfing have presented small, independent board makers with many challenges stemming from the wide availability of cheap, mass-produced boards and the influx of new surfers. The authors follow the story of board makers who have survived these challenges and stayed true to their calling by keeping the mythology and creativity of board making alive. In addition, they explore the heritage of the craft, the secrets of custom board production, the role of local geography in shaping board styles, and the survival of hand-crafting skills.
From the olo boards of ancient Hawaiian kahuna to the high-tech designs that represent the current state of the industry, Surfing Places, Surfboard Makers offers an entrée into the world of surfboard making that will find an eager audience among researchers and students of Pacific culture, history, geography, and economics, as well as surfing enthusiasts.
Accounts of making as a social and economic practice, and as a process of material transformation... more Accounts of making as a social and economic practice, and as a process of material transformation, are accumulating both within and beyond geography. In this article, we turn our attention to how geographers have engaged viscerally with the labour process of making, by putting their own bodies to work, as makers themselves, or alongside those of research participants. Such embodied interventions extend academic understandings of the everyday, embodied accumulation of skill and tacit knowledge, as well as offering an alternative, methodologically transparent approach to nonrepresentational modes of writing. We review how geographers interested in making have found ways in which to deeply engage the field, often building on longstanding personal interests and auto‐ethnographic methods, in the face of pragmatic concerns for safety and security in the workplace, as well as the time constraints of the neoliberal academy. We conclude that the flourishing slow scholarship on geographies of making has opened up a productive portal through which to re‐connect work and the body. Deeper insights arise from implicating our labouring selves in both the making, as well as writing about making.
City, Culture and Society, 2017
Urban policy-makers have largely treated the cultural economy as either an appendage of a larger ... more Urban policy-makers have largely treated the cultural economy as either an appendage of a larger creative or knowledge-based economy or as a means of enhancing consumption. The result has been a focus on programs to attract highly educated and skilled professionals often at the expense of attention to workforce inequality, manual workers and skills, gentrification, and the displacement of small, independent manufacturing businesses. In the context of growing labour market inequality and deepening urban cultural schisms, this paper seeks to redirect urban and cultural policy toward a more progressive research and policy agenda centered on material cultural production. Our point of departure is to focus on the nascent intersection between the cultural economy and small manufacturing. This paper first provides a brief summary of the current approaches to urban policy and the cultural economy and the factors that have shaped policy decisions. Next, we discuss emerging attention around an alternative urban cultural policy agenda geared toward the cultural industries, small manufacturing, and craft-based production. Finally, we explore the relationships among cultural industries and small manufacturers and discuss the key research gaps and policy issues that will affect relationships and development oriented to cultural production and manufacturing at the city-region level.
Ethical Consumption: A Critical Introduction
Everybody needs clothing for warmth and protection; but clothing is much more than body covering.... more Everybody needs clothing for warmth and protection; but clothing is much more than body covering. This chapter contrasts arguments from the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School and poststructuralist/feminist cultural studies to understand and problematize the ethics of clothing consumption as fashion. Clothing is a basic manufacturing industry, one which drove the industrial revolution to meet the essential human need to be covered. But fashion is also a cultural industry, promoting particular forms of consumption as social practices, ...
Singapore Journal of Tropical …, Jan 1, 2009
Australian Geographer, Jan 1, 2010
This article examines remoteness and proximity as geographical conditions and metaphors. It stems... more This article examines remoteness and proximity as geographical conditions and metaphors. It stems from a large government-funded research project which sought to examine the extent and uniqueness of the creative industries in Darwin—a small but important city in Australia's tropical Top End region, and government and administration capital of the sparsely populated Northern Territory. In talking to creative artists from diverse fields about their work and inspiration, it became clear that geographical positionality was a key framing device through which people understood themselves and their relationships with others. Remoteness and proximity were tangible in the sense of physical distances (Darwin is remote from southern States, and yet proximate to Asia and Aboriginal country). But Darwin's location was also perceived and imagined, in cultural texts, in creative workers' discussions of Darwin in relation to the outside world, and in their sense of the aesthetic qualities of the city's creative output (particularly shaped by multicultural and Aboriginal influences). We develop our analysis from 98 interviews with creative workers and postal surveys returned by 13 festival organisers in Darwin. Qualities of distance, proximity, isolation and connection materially shape a political economy of creative industry production, and infuse how creative workers view their activities within networks of trade, exchange and mobility.
Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 2015
Dialogues in Human Geography, 2013
Dialogues in Human Geography, 2013
Cultural Industries and the Production of Culture, 1844
Cultures & conflits, 2012
Dialogues in Human Geography, 2012
Brett Christophers' Envisioning Media Power is an impressive book–long, dense in par... more Brett Christophers' Envisioning Media Power is an impressive book–long, dense in parts, encyclopaedic. It is not just about the economics of television broadcasting, production, territorialisation and trade (the detail of which I devoured with glee–from DVD region codes to free digital set-top boxes) but also about the very framing of analysis of economic geography more broadly. Rarely do books gamble with being so exhaustive and authoritative across scales, theories and specific examples. I read this book as one does ...
International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2012
This article stems from a project examining cultural assets in Wollongong – a medium-sized Austra... more This article stems from a project examining cultural assets in Wollongong – a medium-sized Australian city with a decentralized and linear suburban pattern that challenges orthodox binaries of inner-city bohemia/outer-suburban domesticity. In Wollongong we documented community perceptions of cultural assets across this unusual setting, through a simple public research method. At the city’s largest annual festival we recruited the general