Sean Heath will be giving a seminar to the Research Group RESPONSE at Nord University on August 29th, 2024, from 14:-15 CEST. They have kindly made it possible to attend the seminar virtually.
Those interested in attending virtually should contact Jens Grut Vorpvik (jens.g.vorpvik@nord.no) in order to obtain the TEAMS meeting invite.
Title: Learning to “Play Well” while Swimming Outdoors: Embracing Competitive Values, Playful Encounters, and Changing Fields
Abstract: What can we learn by focusing our attention on changing fields of play? By accounting for the transitions between elite sport and recreational sporting activities? Of the residues which seep across these ‘boundaries’ of practice? How does movement indoors and out shape the subjectivities of sporting practitioners? This talk explores these questions through recounting of ethnographic fieldwork and an apprenticeship in competitive swimming in England and Canada. Competition is not anathema to recreational or leisure sport but rather a productive form through which to understand playful practices, the precipitation of contingency, and the generation of sporting subjectivities. Amongst the Masters swimmers I swam with, an engagement in playful competition assisted in the development of good skills, which include bodily techniques to swim fast and to sight well. I argue that approaching the practices of swimming with a playful disposition, and through the cultivation of ‘good skills,’ assists swimmers’ improvisation within both the contingency created by changing fields and the possibilities of chance, change, and luck introduced through playful competition itself. Within changing fields, there is not one way in which to play but multiple playings, play in the plural. It is in the interpretation and interaction between swimmers, watery environments, and competitive structures, that swimmers can demonstrate their skills and capacities to play well in an uncertain world.
Additional publication details of the seminar can be found here on the RESPONSE research group’s website:
The RESPONSE website: https://site.nord.no/response/2023/05/16/response-seminar-29-august-learning-to-play-well-while-swimming-outdoors-embracing-competitive-values-playful-encounters-and-changing-fields/