Social trivia is a professional hazard of mine — as a sociologist, I’m trained to keep an eye on social structure. In my non-work life, I find that I often can’t close that eye — I notice structure everywhere, from lines at the movies to turn-taking at the grocery store deli counter, to the order in which people get on the subway. I’m particularly fascinated by how small groups of people create meaning and order through rules, and how those rules become codified and institutionalized over time.

The newest example I’ve found of this is wetiquette, the rules and guidelines for what surfers owe to one another, both in the water and on land. There are numerous webpages about wetiquette, and even a book about it. We non-surfing folk often look at surfers and see disorder and laziness (sometimes this is appealing, and sometimes it is not), however, the surfing world is quite structured, both hierarchically and socially.

It’s fascinating, and not surprisingly, there have been many social scientists who have studied surfing, like this one and this one.

Of course, no weblog entry about the social structure of surfing would be complete without a mention of the movie Surf Nazis Must Die — for a certain kind of movie fan (like me!), this movie is pure genius.