In July 2021 torrential rains terrified the Midwest of Europe resulting in severe floodings, leading to the deaths of 41 people in Belgium and 180 in Germany. While the floods themselves received quite some media attention, the aftermath has seen less societal interest and concern. Meanwhile, families, businesses, as well as local ecosystems continue to deal with the flood’s consequences, and with recurring floods. Particularly, the ongoing presence of river mud has presented the areas with problems crossing the realm of the private, public, and ecological.
This dark, sticky, smelly substance – often discarded as waste – has been a strong material reminder and remainder of the floods and has generated specific concerns about its potentially toxic effects, composition, and proper management. That is why the goal of this research project is to ethnographically examine the aftermath of the 2021 flooding highlighting the long-term repercussions on the local ecology and social environment through the perspective of river mud. Resulting in the research question: How has the persistent presence of river mud informed, transformed and deformed socioecological relations in the Maas and Rhine area?
I focus on three rivers, the Vesder in Belgium, the Ahr in Germany and the Geul in the Netherlands, and look at how and where mud has impinged on socioecological relations across different sites, ranging from the home to public space, and the local ecosystem.
By examining how mud has affected ecologies, public spaces, and people’s private homes and lives, I draw on recent advances in post-humanist anthropological theory. This means that I concentrate on how more-than-human entities, like rivers and mud, impact human life and vice versa (Tsing 2015, Ingold 2007, Cohn and Lynch 2017:285). I consider mud an active agent that does things in and with the world it is part of.