The research themes in the social sciences on surfing in France reflect a diversity of questions and empirical research fields. The different objects (representations, political regulations, social uses, territorialities, jobs, gender, etc.) constitute a solid base of knowledge. As a result, surfing can be fully used as an analyzer of contemporary phenomena, whether they are social, cultural or economic. Whatever the theoretical or disciplinary anchorage, deconstruction, de-essentialization, historicization, contextualization, etc. are all "reference words" with which research must combine when surfing is apprehended as a total social phenomenon (Mauss). Surfing and surfing practice are only what individuals make of it. Surfing has no nature: it is the product of long historical and social processes. However, the common sense remains alive as soon as one evokes surfing and its practitioners: the images of "travel", "idleness", "lifestyle", "freedom", "dream", etc. participate in the elaboration of these spontaneous representations. If the representations are based on our subjectivities but also on factual data, there is one that, for a long time, has remained tenacious about the surfing universe in France. It is the idea according to which surfing would be positioned in a "counter-cultural" dimension. The counter-culture is by definition mixed with protest movements, with the refusal of orthodoxies, with the rupture with the dominant political and cultural orders. Some factual elements, coming from empirical data, allow us to nuance strongly this affiliation that has become too often obvious and unthought according to which the counter-culture would be, in certain social configurations, mechanically attached to surfing and surfers. The social history of surfing in France shows that the activity was, at the beginning, socially classifying and distinctive in Biarritz in 1960s, a posh seaside resort. Moreover, if the counterculture is so present in the discursive space and the advertising images, it is because the argument is economically interesting, as well for the french specialized press as for the international companies of surfwear. Finally, the institutionalization, the professionalization, the continuous media coverage of surfing or its recent registration as an Olympic discipline are all processes that euphemize the essentializing idea of counterculture. Bibliography: Guibert, C. (2011), Surf et « contre-culture » : la dimension symbolique des constructions journalistiques de la presse spécialisée en France, Sciences Sociales et Sports, 4, 11-40. Guibert, C. (Ed.). (2020). Les mondes du surf. Transformations historiques, trajectoires sociales, bifurcations technologiques. Pessac: Maison des Sciences de l’Homme d’Aquitaine. Mauss, M., [1923-1924] (2012), Essai sur le don : Forme et raison de l'échange dans les sociétés archaïques, Paris: PUF, Wheaton, B. (2007). After sport culture: Rethinking sport and post-subcultural theory. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 31(3), 283–307.

The research themes in the social sciences on surfing in France reflect a diversity of questions and empirical research fields. The different objects (representations, political regulations, social uses, territorialities, jobs, gender, etc.) constitute a solid base of knowledge. As a result, surfing can be fully used as an analyzer of contemporary phenomena, whether they are social, cultural or economic. Whatever the theoretical or disciplinary anchorage, deconstruction, de-essentialization, historicization, contextualization, etc. are all "reference words" with which research must combine when surfing is apprehended as a total social phenomenon (Mauss). Surfing and surfing practice are only what individuals make of it. Surfing has no nature: it is the product of long historical and social processes. However, the common sense remains alive as soon as one evokes surfing and its practitioners: the images of "travel", "idleness", "lifestyle", "freedom", "dream", etc. participate in the elaboration of these spontaneous representations. If the representations are based on our subjectivities but also on factual data, there is one that, for a long time, has remained tenacious about the surfing universe in France. It is the idea according to which surfing would be positioned in a "counter-cultural" dimension. The counter-culture is by definition mixed with protest movements, with the refusal of orthodoxies, with the rupture with the dominant political and cultural orders. Some factual elements, coming from empirical data, allow us to nuance strongly this affiliation that has become too often obvious and unthought according to which the counter-culture would be, in certain social configurations, mechanically attached to surfing and surfers. The social history of surfing in France shows that the activity was, at the beginning, socially classifying and distinctive in Biarritz in 1960s, a posh seaside resort. Moreover, if the counterculture is so present in the discursive space and the advertising images, it is because the argument is economically interesting, as well for the french specialized press as for the international companies of surfwear. Finally, the institutionalization, the professionalization, the continuous media coverage of surfing or its recent registration as an Olympic discipline are all processes that euphemize the essentializing idea of counterculture. Bibliography: Guibert, C. (2011), Surf et « contre-culture » : la dimension symbolique des constructions journalistiques de la presse spécialisée en France, Sciences Sociales et Sports, 4, 11-40. Guibert, C. (Ed.). (2020). Les mondes du surf. Transformations historiques, trajectoires sociales, bifurcations technologiques. Pessac: Maison des Sciences de l’Homme d’Aquitaine. Mauss, M., [1923-1924] (2012), Essai sur le don : Forme et raison de l'échange dans les sociétés archaïques, Paris: PUF, Wheaton, B. (2007). After sport culture: Rethinking sport and post-subcultural theory. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 31(3), 283–307.