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Paper short abstract

When water moves outside its expected flow, it exposes not only infrastructural vulnerabilities but also relational and contested aspects of care. The entangled fluidity of water and care highlights the ongoing work of coordinating knowledge, values, and practices in socio-environmental crises.

Paper long abstract

Extreme rainfall events, such as those in July 2021 in the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium, disrupt hydro-social systems designed to steer water through engineering, monitoring, and forecasting. We argue that these “watery crisis encounters” co-constitute what good care is. When water moves outside its expected flow, it exposes not only infrastructural vulnerabilities but also relational and contested aspects of care.

In this paper, we explore these dynamics by examining how smaller tributaries respond rapidly to localized rainfall and resist precise modelling, while larger rivers change in “character,” challenging monitoring practices and cross-border coordination. Crisis management assemblages translate uncertainty into structured tools such as alert levels and thresholds. Yet responses depend not solely on technical forecasts. Recollections of past floods, embodied understandings of river behavior, and tacit judgments about landscapes, infrastructures, and patient care interact with formal models to guide decisions.

In these moments, we argue that care flows like water: relational, context-dependent, and adaptive. (Forecasts of) overflowing rivers prompt responsive forms of care, while practices in hospitals, long-term care facilities, and communities mediate and respond to water’s flows. Water and care thus co-constitute each other, shaping affective and relational dynamics across organizational levels.

Drawing on ethnographic research within an interdisciplinary consortium, we discuss how flood knowledge circulated among hydrologists, crisis managers, healthcare professionals, and residents, revealing the hydro-social politics through which water, risk, and care are collectively negotiated. The entangled fluidity of water and care highlights the ongoing work of coordinating knowledge, values, and practices in socio-environmental crises.