Wild Swimming by Kate Moles

This event has ended.

‘Wild swimming’ comes in many guises, some more tame than others. Broadly, wild swimming can be understood as swimming outside, which would include sea swimming, lake swimming, river swimming, lidos, tidal pool and estuaries. There has been an increase in popularity of this form of swimming, with advocates praising the release from and resistance to more regulated, repetitive length-swimming in what is sometimes referred to as the ‘chlorine box’ of the swimming pool. Normative understandings of swimming, gender, the body, safety, place and community are suspended in the wild water, an interconnectedness and entanglement of people and nature challenges ideas of who we are and what we do. Wild swimming is a site of different cultural meanings and social practices, enmeshed in a range of regulatory and ritualistic practices.

In this talk, Kate positions wild swimming historically and culturally, before describing initial observations of and nascent ethnography to frame it as a set of practices worthy of sociological attention.