Forces at play – Hydrosocial infrastructuring and the making of the modern Rhine

Nils Mühlenbrock
Chair of Sociology of Technology and Organization (STO), Institute of Sociology, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany; nmuehlenbrock@soziologie.rwth-aachen.de

Roger Häußling
Chair of Sociology of Technology and Organization (STO), Institute of Sociology, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany; rhaeussling@soziologie.rwth-aachen.de

Tim Franke
Chair of Sociology of Technology and Organization (STO), Institute of Sociology, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany; tfranke@soziologie.rwth-aachen.de

ABSTRACT: Rivers like the Rhine are embedded in complex hydrosocial entanglements. They serve as vital, though often latent, infrastructures that provide essential services and resources and underpin a wide array of situated sociomaterial practices. Yet their close relationship with societies is marked by a profound duality, as indicated by the increasing frequency of flood events and droughts. This article introduces a sociological account of rivers as hydrosocial infrastructures, that acknowledges heterogeneity, materiality and fluidity, alongside technical rationality and issues of control. Drawing on Bennett’s "thing-materialism", the paper develops a theoretically grounded, process-sociological heuristic that reconceives "thing-power" as a relational capacity and systematises (hydrosocial) infrastructuring across six dimensions. Applying this framework to the historical case of the Rhine rectification in the 18th and 19th centuries enables a deconstruction of the engineering work as the product of a heterogeneous assemblage, while highlighting the multifaceted forces at play in the river’s gradual transformation into a hydrosocial infrastructure. The paper shows how the Rhine’s "modern" infrastructural character emerges from long-standing transformations that inscribe particular ontologies, values, expectations and relations to nature into the river’s form – patterns that remain embedded within ongoing sociomaterial processes. While emerging from hydrosocial inquiry, the framework offers a perspective that may extend to other sociomaterial contexts that are shaped by infrastructured relations.

KEYWORDS: Infrastructure, hydrosocial, thing-power, modern water, sociology of water, Rhine straightening