Special Issue Journal Article, Health & Place

‘Swimming, confusion, and plenty of brews: Negotiating ambivalence within Windermere’s fragile waters’

My first peer reviewed journal article was published in Health & Place earlier this month – a huge milestone for the project. 

Journal Article - Swimming, Confusion and Plenty of Brews - Taylor Butler-Eldridge
Swimming, Confusion and Plenty of Brews - Taylor Butler-Eldridge

The article forms part of a forthcoming Special Issue (The Blue Un/Commons: Tracing New Directions in Research on Outdoor Swimming) led by editors Ronan Foley, Rebecca Olive, and Kate Moles. It offers methodological contributions – extending Clifton Evers’ wet ethnography within the complex worlds and relationships of outdoor swimming and environmental health at Windermere.

"Windermere is a complex and contested freshwater site which encounters fluctuating social and environmental pressures. Swimmers at Windermere regularly practice across all four seasons while negotiating social concerns such as access, conflicting user groups, public health communications, and swim safety, alongside environmental complications including extreme weather, wastewater, run-off, plastic pollution, algal blooms, biosecurity, and climate change. Simultaneously, these entangled pressures generate ongoing adaptation, ambivalence, and avoidance within the swim communities. Furthermore, they disrupt individualised and inwardly focused understandings of ‘healthy’ outdoor swimming practices. In contribution to the special issue (on outdoor swimming), this article reflects on how outdoor swimming researchers may methodologically attend to these social and environmental complexities within contested lacustrine environments through an immersive 12-month wet ethnographic approach, combining ‘lake-hangouts’ and ‘swim-along interviews’ with different swimmers at Windermere. The article discusses how these relational in-situ approaches can continue to broaden inwardly focused understandings of ‘healthy’ outdoor swimming practices towards the wider social and environmental relations for both the participants and researcher. The article also highlights senses of ambivalence and ethical tension while negotiating conflicting concerns of ill-health, in and out of Windermere's fragile waters."

After a year of working on the article, I am so thrilled to finally get it out there. There is free access until 18th September 2024.

I owe a massive thank you to the editors, reviewers, Jen Lea, John Wylie, Jo little, and Jimmy Turner for their support with the writing, Ian Wood for some of the photography featured, and to my fellow swimmers, dippers, and dunkers within the community.

It’s been a busy summer – finishing my placement with the Freshwater Biological Association, podcasting with the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, presenting at the EASST-4S conference in Amsterdam, and continuing to write up my thesis.

There’s still a long way to go and further outputs on the way! Keep your eyes peeled for some more exciting news within outdoor swimming research in the next couple of months!

Author: Taylor Butler-Eldridge | Published: 13 Aug 2024

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