Two Fountains and a Changing Waterscape in Rural Greece

Abstract

Water’s role in shaping human societies, economies, and cultures extends beyond its status as a natural resource. This water quality, the entanglement of the social and natural, constructs the waterscape. This paper discusses how a community fountain and its replica, in a rural community of Greece, constructed by different agents with divergent motivations and objective, form a waterscape, expressing the socionature of water. Perceptions, imaginaries, values, and connotations are considered in the making and (dis)continuity of the waterscape. Community practices, social and cultural meanings, economy, commodification, collective work, privatisation, memory, and nostalgia are schemes that flow within the waterscape, over time. Flows and uses, livability, and emotions display diverse patterns of sense of rootedness on the community space.

Keywords

• bottled water
• traditional fountain
• landscape
• waterworld
• soundscape
• nostalgia