OUAS Connections: Boaters' recent political struggles and the social life of the waterways

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Abstract: The waterways of England and Wales form an interconnected network of canals and rivers that traverse many of the nations' most significant and densely populated towns and cities, as well as some of their most remote and rural areas. These waterways are also home to a diverse group of individuals and families, often referred to as "boaters." While many boaters reside on permanent moorings, including marinas, a significant number make use of a law that allows them to move every 14 days. This mobile lifestyle creates a traveling population, commonly known as "continuous cruisers," though this term is subject to debate.

From 2012 to 2018, I lived aboard a narrowboat in and around London and conducted research into the motivations driving people to adopt this lifestyle as an alternative to living in fixed accommodations such as flats and houses. My work explores the utopian and pragmatic ideas that inspire this choice, the material realities of living on water, and the type of community formed by those who embrace life afloat.

In this talk, I will draw on the structure of my book, Boaters of London: Itinerant Living on the Water (Berghahn, 2024), to highlight the main features and challenges of boat-dwelling, with a focus on the experiences of itinerant boaters. Additionally, I will discuss the key political struggles faced by boaters in Southeast England and propose ways to support this community as they contend with growing and significant obstacles to their way of life.

Bio: Dr Ben Bowles is a Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at SOAS in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology. He also serves as a Course Lecturer at Fordham University and a Research Fellow at the Open University's Department for Policing. Primarily, he is an anthropologist of Britain and a specialist in political and economic anthropology.

His research on boat-dwelling communities on the UK waterways formed the basis of his PhD at Brunel University (2012–2015) and has recently been published as a monograph with Berghahn (Bowles, 2024). More recently, he has conducted postdoctoral research on several topics, including the trajectory of infrastructure projects through the UK government, the influence of infrastructure financiers in shaping specific forms of infrastructure, the socialization of early-career police officers in the UK, the policing of the Covid-19 pandemic, voter anti-political sentiments during the UK General Election of 2024, and, most recently, political leadership in the context of the climate crisis.

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