Paper short abstract:

Employing (net)ethnographic data, the focus of this paper is on practices and representations of 'water in the village' as a 'natural' materialising the standards of middle-class' identities and aspirations and the (not very) unpredictable failures of that projects in two Bucharest suburbs.

Paper long abstract:

As in other major Eastern European cities, Bucharest has experienced a robust urban sprawl on the outskirts, toward nearby villages. This has created a number of connectivity issues including the overuse of wastewater treatment plants and flooding of land, a permanent (and Promethean) struggle to improve water quality in newly wells. At the same time, the phantasms of autonomy and proximity to nature have also translated into specific middle-class' housing aspirations focused on water presence as well, such as owning an autonomous private fountain in the yards of their detached family houses. One of the first plans that the new residents develop after building their home is to find out from neighbours or online discussion groups about how to dig a 'natural' water fountain, including endless set of technical details. Simultaneously in gated communities there arise ample discussions about the problems generated by the treatment plant. Employing (net)ethnographic data gathered from an online group of middle-class residents in Bucharest's suburbs, the goal of this paper is to examine the meanings, practices and representation of 'water in the village' as a 'natural' (i.e. clean), substance embedded in such imagined landscape that materialise the standards of middle-class' identities and aspirations. I will also present the failures of such projects, including past ecological damage of industrial agriculture that render the 'natural' autonomous water as undrinkable water due to pollution with nitrites and pesticides