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Paper short abstract

This paper reports on a collaboration between partners in Iceland, Bulgaria, and the United States around thermal waters as cultural heritage and public good. We consider the role of narrative in shaping this partnership and highlighting everyday intimacies to create change on the ground.

Paper long abstract

How do the stories we tell about water shape, constrain, and enable our capacities to recognize and protect water-based traditions as common good? How might narratives created through transnational collaborations expand multiscalar notions of belonging, cultural property, and collective action for change? Both Icelandic and Bulgarian traditions of public bathing in geothermal waters are relatively overlooked, yet warmly embraced contemporary traditional practices in everyday life. Geothermal bathing infrastructures channel a marvel of the natural world to create spaces of intimacy and community across cultures, but the manipulation and privatization of these waters also threatens shared access to a once-collective resource, not to mention the sense of belonging created through water intimacies. This paper reports on an ongoing transnational, public-facing collaboration between NGO partners in Iceland and Bulgaria, and a folklorist-collaborator in the United States, around thermal waters as cultural heritage and public good. Through cross-cultural exchange, joint reflection, and the creation of immersive ethnographic and artistic experiences, our joint project, titled “Water Agoras,” traces the ecological intimacies created through water, at two opposite corners of Europe. Here, we consider the role of narrative in shaping this partnership, not to mention narrative’s capacity to highlight everyday intimacies and create change on the ground. By co-constructing a joint narrative of thermal bathing as transnational cultural heritage, this partnership illuminates how water infrastructures and water-based practices might support grounded action around collective access to and protection of thermal water bathing as cultural heritage.