The Visual Grammar of a Catastrophe
Changing Representations of the Odra River Floods (1997–2024)
Marcin Brocki
marcin.brocki@uj.edu.plInstytut Etnologii i Antropologii Kulturowej, Uniwersytet Jagielloński (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3703-9761
Abstract
An attempt at an anthropological and semiotic reconstruction of the visual representations of two Odra River floods: the “Great Flood” of 1997 and the events of 2024, regarded as socially rooted systems of meaning constituted under changing media and technological regimes. Press photographs, satellite images, social media contents, and institutional communications were analysed as semiotic practices embedded in politics and society rather than as documents. The difference of the visual representation of the floods – from humanitarian disaster to controlled risk – reveals a change of the dominating regimes of representation: from a mobilizing, emotional-symbolic depiction of suffering and collective effort to technocratic forms of data visualization dominated by indexical strategies. In this article the author attempts to demonstrate how representations of floods can shape and justify particular configurations of man–environment relations and the environment, establishing a framework for emotional, epistemic, and ethical responses to ecological threats.
Supporting Agencies
Keywords:
visual anthropology, flood, new media, visual semiotics, anthropology of disastersReferences
Achremowicz, Hanna, and Krystyna Kamińska. "Mit o powodzi i wydarzenia 1997 roku jako utopia konstytuująca tożsamość wsi Łany, Kamieniec Wrocławski i Jeszkowice." [w:] Utopia a edukacja. T. 2: Pedagogiczne konteksty społecznych wyobrażeń świata możliwego, Roman Włodarczyk (red.), 174–187. Wrocław: Instytut Pedagogiki Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2017.
Google Scholar
Barański, Janusz. "Mistyczny wymiar powodzi." ZNUJ. Prace Etnograficzne 39 (2011): 37–44.
Google Scholar
Barrios, Roberto E. "What Does Catastrophe Reveal for Whom? The Anthropology of Crises and Disasters at the Onset of the Anthropocene." Annual Review of Anthropology 46 (2017): 151–166.
Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. Image, Music, Text. London: Fontana Press, 1977.
Google Scholar
Boutaud, Jean-Jacques. “Visual Semiotics, Pragmatics, and Communication”, w: Advances in Visual Semiotics. The Semiotic Web 1992-93, red. Thomas Sebeok i Jean Umiker-Sebeok, 3–18. Berlin; New York: Mouton De Gruyter, 1995.
Google Scholar
Bożek A., Dubicki A., Dziewanowski M., Kwiatkowska-Szygulska B., „Raport 2002. Środowisko, Wody powierzchniowe”, [w:] Środowisko Wrocławia - informator 2002, on-line: http://eko.org.pl/wroclaw/pdf/wody.pdf (dostęp 2025-03-14).
Google Scholar
Bromhead, Helen. "Disaster linguistics, climate change semantics and public discourse studies: a semantically-enhanced discourse study of 2011 Queensland Floods." Language Sciences 85 (2021): 1–13.
Google Scholar
Broniewski, Tadeusz, and Stanisław Arczyński. Wrocław. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Sport i Turystyka, 1968.
Google Scholar
Carruth, Allison, and Robert P. Marzec. "Environmental Visualization in the Anthropocene: Technologies, Aesthetics, Ethics." Public Culture 26, no. 2 (2014): 205–211.
Google Scholar
Cieśla, J. (2022) „Wielka Powódź sprzed 25 lat. Nikt na ten żywioł nie był gotowy”, portal Polityka, 23 lipiec 2022. [https://www.polityka.pl/tygodnikpolityka/spoleczenstwo/2173719,1,wielka-powodz-sprzed-25-lat-nikt-na-ten-zywiol-nie-byl-gotowy.read.] (dostęp: 10.04.2025).
Google Scholar
Czerner, Oskar, and Stanisław Arczyński. Wrocław, krajobraz i architektura. Warszawa: Arkady, 1976.
Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
Google Scholar
Doering, Martin. "The Politics of Nature: Constructing German Reunification During the Great Oder Flood of 1997." Environment and History 9, no. 2 (2003): 195–214.
Google Scholar
GRS. „Polacy traktują Zbiornik Racibórz Dolny jak bohatera narodowego. «Jest jak Wojtek Szczęsny»”. Onet Wiadomości, 23 wrzesień 2024. https://wiadomosci.onet.pl/slask/zbiornik-raciborz-dolny-bohaterem-narodowym-krolu-zloty-skromny-i-milczacy/4xqlnvd.
Google Scholar
Hand, Martin. "Visuality in social media: Researching images, circulations, and practices." In The SAGE Handbook of Social Media Research Methods, 215–224. London: SAGE Publications, 2017.
Google Scholar
Hastrup, Kirsten, and Martin Skrydstrup, eds. The Social Life of Climate Change Models: Anticipating Nature. New York: Routledge, 2013.
Google Scholar
Kress, Gunther. Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication. London: Routledge, 2010.
Google Scholar
Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge, 2006.
Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno. Splatając na nowo to, co społeczne. Wprowadzenie do teorii aktora-sieci. Translated by Krzysztof Abriszewski and Adam Derra. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Universitas, 2010.
Google Scholar
Liu, Wei, and Wei Xu. "Tweeting to (Selectively) Engage: How Government Agencies Target Stakeholders on Twitter during Hurricane Harvey." International Journal of Communication 13 (2019): 4917–4939.
Google Scholar
Noor, Nora, Robert Okhai, Tanya B. Jamal, Naim Kapucu, Yue Ge, and Shahed Hasan. "Social-media-based crisis communication: Assessing the engagement of local agencies in Twitter during Hurricane Irma." International Journal of Information Management Data Insights 4, no. 2 (2024): 1–17.
Google Scholar
Nora, Pierre. "Between memory and history: Les lieux de memoire." Representations 26 (1989): 7–24.
Google Scholar
Oliver-Smith, Anthony, and Susanna M. Hoffman. The Angry Earth: Disaster in Anthropological Perspective. New York: Routledge, 2020.
Google Scholar
Olszewski, Tadeusz, and Ireneusz Rutkiewicz. Wrocław 1945-1965. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Polonia, 1966.
Google Scholar
Parsons, Kate, Anna L. Williams, and Catherine Skinner. "Using 360° Immersive Storytelling to Engage Communities with Flood Risk." Geographical Research 63, no. 1 (2025): 91–102.
Google Scholar
Percival, S. E., M. Gaterell, and D. Hutchinson. "Effective Flood Risk Visualisation." Natural Hazards 104, no. 1 (2020): 375–396.
Google Scholar
Sontag, Susan. Widok cudzego cierpienia. Translated by Sławomir Magala. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Karakter, 2023.
Google Scholar
Urry, John, and Phil Macnaghten. Contested Natures. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications Ltd, 1998.
Google Scholar
Włodarczyk, Bartosz. „Powódź Tysiąclecia z 1997 roku. Wymiar społeczny oraz instytucjonalny”. Konteksty Społeczne 9, nr 1 (2021): 25–46.
Google Scholar
Authors
Marcin Brockimarcin.brocki@uj.edu.pl
Instytut Etnologii i Antropologii Kulturowej, Uniwersytet Jagielloński Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3703-9761
Marcin Brocki – antropolog kultury. Profesor w Instytucie Etnologii i Antropologii Kulturowej UJ, były dyrektor tego Instytutu. Zajmuje się problematyką historii, teorii i metodologii antropologii kulturowej, problemami gwałtownych zmian w społecznościach lokalnych oraz problemami współczesnej, cyfrowej estetyzacji natury.
Statistics
Abstract views: 0PDF downloads: 0
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Marcin Brocki

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

