Living Without Water: Drought, Inequality, and Climate Silence in a Romanian Village

Abstract

This article analyzes the experience of the water crisis in a Romanian village affected by drought, placing its approach in the context of the Centenary of the Bucharest School of Sociology. Drawing on ethnographic research and an auto-ethnographic perspective, the study investigates how inequality of access to water is structured by administrative failures and infrastructural gaps. Using Dimitrie Gusti's conceptual apparatus of “frames” and “manifestations” as an analytical tool, the paper demonstrates how an ecological phenomenon (drought) is socially transformed into a crisis of governance and mistrust. The analysis also highlights the phenomenon of “climate silence”, arguing that this is not just a consequence of a lack of information but an active social response to a crisis perceived as overwhelming and insoluble at the local level. By placing the lived experiences of villagers in dialogue with debates in political ecology and environmental sociology, the article contributes to understanding how ecological precarity is mediated by everyday inequalities and silences discourses about systemic causes. Finally, the paper emphasizes the enduring heuristic relevance of the monographic tradition for the analysis of contemporary socio-ecological issues.