How to build an illegal flood barrier? Some reflections on self-organization and grassroots initiatives in local communities

Abstract

This article is devoted to reflections on self-organization and grassroots initiatives undertaken in local communities. Based on the results of long-term ethnographic research conducted at a holiday resort in Mazovia, it analyses the process through which the local community constructed illegal floodbanks. The author shows the social and cultural context of the described phenomenon, referring, for example, to the peasant tradition of cooperation and mutual aid, to the category of ‘acquaintance’, and the practice of uniting in resistance against the authorities. By focusing attention on the local character of both the initiative and its execution, the author highlights the different functioning of rural and metropolitan communities, and the different nature of their grass-roots initiatives.