Socio-Cultural Constructions of Vulnerability and Resilience. German and Polish Perceptions of Threatening Aquatic Phenomena in Odra River Regions

该项目的目的是调查在多大程度上认识和处理潜在的脆弱性和复原力--与河流地区的洪水等水生现象有关--与复杂的社会文化知识结构有关并受到其影响。该项目旨在解决在脆弱性和复原力研究领域可以发现的现有研究空白：在那里，受人类生态学和自然灾害研究的强烈影响，到目前为止，脆弱性和复原力这两个术语仍然是以一种本质上的方式作为事实来构思的。虽然这是一种合理的观点，但它忽视了社会根据其过去和现在受文化影响的自然现象的经历，可能在社会上构建自己的脆弱或有韧性的现实，这一现实成为一种特殊的现实，并肯定对行动战略产生影响。需要的是关于文化知识秩序在脆弱性和复原力的社会文化建设中的作用的经验性和概念性工作。在此背景下，该项目的研究问题是：脆弱性和复原力的构建是如何在特定的社会文化、国家和区域背景下经验性地构建的，以及它们如何植根于各自社会的文化知识秩序？研究重点将集中在德国和波兰选定的奥德拉地区：Eisenhüttenstadt、法兰克福/奥德、斯拉比斯和弗罗茨瓦夫地区，这些地区的洪水自1997年以来一直是一个热门话题，也就是奥德拉严重洪灾发生的那一年。因此，由社会学、文化科学和文学研究学者组成的德国-波兰研究小组旨在理解和概念化如何建立脆弱和有韧性的观念，以及如何将文化知识融入这些结构中。

The aim of the project is to investigate in how far perceiving and coping with potential vulnerabilities and resiliencies - related to aquatic phenomena such as floods in river regions - is tied to and influenced by complex socio-cultural knowledge constructions. The project intends to address an existing research gap which can be identified in the field of vulnerability and resilience studies: There, strongly influenced by human ecology and natural hazards research, up to now, the terms vulnerability and resilience are still conceived of in an essentialist way as matters of fact. Although this is a legitimate perspective, this ignores that societies, on the basis of their past and present culturally influenced experiences with natural phenomena may socially construct their own reality of being vulnerable or resilient, a reality which becomes a reality sui generis and definitely has consequences for action strategies. What is required is empirical and conceptual work on the role of cultural knowledge orders in the socio-cultural construction of vulnerability and resilience. Against this background the research question of the project is: How are vulnerability and resilience constructions structured empirically in specific socio-cultural national and regional contexts and how are they rooted in cultural knowledge orders of a respective society? The research focus will be on selected Odra regions in Germany and Poland: the region of Eisenhüttenstadt, Frankfurt/Oder, Slubice and Wroclaw, where floods have become a hot topic at the very latest since 1997, the year of the severe Odra flooding. Thus, the German-Polish research team that comprises scholars from sociology, cultural science and literary studies aims at understanding and conceptualizing how perceptions of being vulnerable and resilient are discursively constructed and how cultural knowledge is woven into these constructions.