Social Movements and Democratization Processes: Water Culture and the Notion of Care in Stagiates, Greece

This paper aims to explore the notion of care produced by the Stagiates community connected to water movements in Greece. It is a part of a PhD research in Political Science and Sociology at Scuola Normale Superiore. It is based on a three-month ethnographic fieldwork and document analysis of archives produced by the focus groups.

Stagiates is a village in the region of Thessaly. There has been a tradition of self-management of the hydrological network in Stagiates since the 18th century. Reforms in policy-making affected water management and increased the pressures towards the privatization attempts of the water sources in the area. The financial crisis of 2008, widened the water conflicts and broadened the space for collective actions from the grassroots. In 2009, an independent group of action was created in the village connected to a wide sphere of social movements. Collective actions were unfolded to protect water as a commons. Additionally, in 2020 there was the broadening of the Popular Assembly of Stagiates, which functions through open democracy.

The paper perceives social movements as agents of knowledge production and democratization processes. In the case of Stagiates, the paper argues that water movements connected to commoning enhanced the space of care production in and beyond the Anthropocene; care for the hydrological network, care for the place, and care for the community.

To sum up, this paper will attempt to illustrate the water culture from the past to the present through the lens of commoning and collective actions. Furthermore, it will address the question of what makes water a commons in times of crisis through the collective actions that lead to ongoing processes towards care. To conclude, community-building in and beyond the place and care production through collective actions will be explored through a micro and meso level of analysis.