THE BIEBRZA HYDROSOCIAL LANDSCAPE. ANALYSIS OF ENVIRONMENTAL DISCOURSES IN THE LARGEST POLISH NATIONAL PARK
The author analyses narratives about the environment in the largest national park in Poland. She attempts to present the socio-cultural aspect of water in Podlasie, based on the concept of the hydrosocial cycle as interpreted by Jamie Linton and Jessica Budds (2013), but extending it to the non-human world. In the Biebrza Valley there are many different environmental discourses, as well as conflicts related to the different approaches to the relationship between nature and humans. Two of them are dominant: the discourse of the employees and experts of the Biebrza National Park (“institutional”) and that of the dissatisfied inhabitants (“agricultural”). The author moves away from the relativistic understanding of knowledge, typical of ethnography.