Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2023

The ‘miraculous water’ and its infrastructures: Commodification, re-appropriations and struggles along thermal water pipes in a Bulgarian town

Résumé

In 1948, the town of Velingrad (Bulgaria), emerged from three villages with a long durée relationship to thermomineral water and its infrastructures (natural hot springs, public baths, public fountains, washhouses, but also pipes and catchments). Building on that heritage, the socialist regime succeeded in making the town a leading destination for balneotherapy and recreation (kurort). This was not only a top down process. Inhabitants have been historically involved in the construction works and everyday adjustments, appropriations, reparations. The social intimacy between inhabitants and “their” water supply network raises the question of underground waters as an inherent pattern of the urban ecosystem. The process deeply involves the visible and the invisible human and non-human actors. Therefore any change in the water cycle brings about changes in the larger society. After socialism, mineral water became a highly coveted resource, especially for the spa industry. In this paper we focus on post-socialist transformations and the process of water grabbing taking place at the expense of individual and collective practices. We show how this accumulation versus dispossession deepens inequalities and the feeling of injustice among inhabitants. However, new practices of contest take place not only at political level but also along the pipes. The unique hydro-social landscape of Velingrad reveals the singular relationship that inhabitants maintain with mineral water and its infrastructure in particular. It could be approached as a day to day struggle for access to a common but limited resource. Following a critical political ecology approach, this paper is an original contribution that deepens the comprehension of the plurality of waterS, in the field of infrastructural turn.

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hal-04970315 , version 1 (27-02-2025)

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  • HAL Id : hal-04970315 , version 1

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Raphaëlle Segond, Miladina Monova. The ‘miraculous water’ and its infrastructures: Commodification, re-appropriations and struggles along thermal water pipes in a Bulgarian town. International conference on “Culture, Infrastructure, Mobility”, Sofia University, Department for History and Theory of Culture; Leibniz Institut Für Länderkunde (IFL), Oct 2023, Sofia, Bulgaria. ⟨hal-04970315⟩
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