Abstract

This article draws on conversations and ethnographic observations with activists in Granada, Andalusia, as they learn to respond 'otherwise' to the socioecological challenges of the Dílar and Monachil rivers. They inhabit the disorienting space opened by asking how to care for rivers during the multiple grievances of the 'scandalous thing' (Haraway, 1988) – understood as interlocking material-discursive power dynamics. These activists invite us to embrace 'caring', to articulate emergent ethico-political repertoires that strive to interrupt the dominant imaginaries of rivers and environmental activism in the region. Drawing on a political ecology of water, posthuman feminist theory, and care scholarship, we examine how these activists attempt to cultivate caring relationships with rivers, emphasizing the affective entanglements and material interdependence of human and more-than-human beings in Granada's rural agroecosystems. The feminist figuration of permeability is central to understanding how these activists navigate the disputed and shifting boundaries of these river-worlds. We highlight how permeable boundaries allow water, concerns, and stories to seep through allegedly fixed divides, reflecting the activists' engagement with the interdependent flows of energy, matter, identities, feelings, and meanings within these agroecosystems. By reclaiming the affective and material interdependence that sustains life from the mountains to the plains in a territory where, according to activists, "everything is cemented and broken," we conclude that these activists' caring engagements are enacting permeable river-worlds that attempt to hold together fractured and potentially conflicting lifeways across the shared commons of these river basins.

Keywords: care, rivers, permeability, environmental activism, affective entanglements

How to Cite:

Cuevas Parra, C., Arbeláez Trujillo, A. & Hoogesteger, J., (2026) “Permeable river-worlds: Emergent caring politics along the Dílar and Monachil rivers in southern Spain”, Journal of Political Ecology 33(1): 7108. doi: https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.7108