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The swimming pool

The swimming pool: Laurie Taylor explores its iconic role in our society and culture, as well as its the unspoken rules, routines and rituals.

The swimming pool: Laurie Taylor explores its iconic role in our culture, as well as its unspoken rules, routines and rituals. Piotr Florczyk, forming swimming champion and Assistant Professor of Global Literary Studies at the University of Washington, considers the allure of an azure pool and its place in our cultural imagination, from the Hollywood movie, Sunset Boulevard, to David Hockney's pool paintings. He also asks 'who has access to the pool' and charts North America's shifting attitudes towards race and recreation which turned public bathing into an explosive issue, one leading to violence, segregation and the flight to white suburbia. What is the future of the pool given water shortages and climate change? Also, Susie Scott, Professor of Sociology at the University of Sussex analyses the unspoken social norms which govern swimmers behaviour, including a respect for personal space, a shared disapproval for the 'hairy torpedo' and the firm refusal to notice 'the elephant in the room' - the fact that we are nearly naked.

Producer: Jayne Egerton

Available now

28 minutes

Last on

Sun 23 Jun 2024 06:05

Guests and further reading

- , Professor of Sociology at the University of Sussex

Paper: (published in the journal, Symbolic Interaction)


- , Assistant Professor of Global Literary Studies at the University of Washington

Swimming Pool (Bloomsbury Publishing)


Broadcasts

  • Tue 18 Jun 2024 15:30
  • Sun 23 Jun 2024 06:05

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