Managing floods along the Citarum River in Indonesia: Hydrosocial geographies and community politics in Bandung Basin, West Java

Abstract

This article examines how hydrological extremes unfold at the local level and interact with socio-spatial inequality, focusing on recurrent flooding in West Java, Indonesia. In doing so, it contributes to a more nuanced understanding of how marginalized communities navigate and reshape unequal hydrosocial relations in urban contexts of the Global South. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork in the kampung (urban village) of Andir – a densely populated settlement in the Bandung Basin, often referred to as the ‘bottom of the bowl’ – we analyse how flooding is co-produced through state-led management strategies that prioritize large-scale infrastructural interventions and downstream protection, often at the expense of upstream communities. The aim is to analyse how people in Andir experience and cope with flooding events through social practices and political action. Bringing together literature on hydrosocial geographies and the concept of prefigurative politics, we show how residents respond to these conditions through collective action and community-based adaptation strategies. In particular, we identify three possibilities for prefigurative politics that emerge through grassroots action in Andir: community-led infrastructural interventions (e.g. improving local drainage systems), the creation of participatory discussion spaces such as ngobrol pintar, and the promotion of more care-full and relational understandings of the river. We argue that these actions not only address immediate flooding risks but also create spaces of empowerment by fostering collective identities and opening up political possibilities. In this way, they prefigure alternative socio-environmental futures while actively reshaping hydrosocial relations in the present.