Conference dinner - NASS XI

On June 15th I took part in (and helped organize) the conference dinner at the 11th conference of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies, at Scandic Forum Hotel in Stavanger. Some 20 people were there.

NASS board meeting chaired

Today I have chaired the board meeting of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies. Amongst other things we talked about the forthcoming General Assembly during NASS XI (Stavanger June 13-15).

NASS on Facebook

The Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies is now on Facebook. Our page has just passed 50 Likes.

Juha Ojala joins NASS board

Juha Ojala, professor of music education, has joined the board of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies as Supplementary Representative for Finland - see full board at our webpage.

NASS webpage updated

I have made some updates on the webpage of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies (NASS), including uploading the latest newsletter (Spring 2017), and the list of current board members.

Abstracts evaluated for NASS X

In late February I have taken part in assessing revised abstracts submitted to NASS X (Kaunas, June) as part of the conference´s Scientific committee.

3rd and final abstract deadline for NASS X

The final abstract deadline for the 10th conference of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies, to be held in conjunction with the 13th World Congress of Semiotics in Kaunas, Lithuania, June 26-30th 2017, is January 31st. See the NASS webpage for more info.

Webpage for NASS X (Kaunas)

As the webmaster of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies, I have just moved the NASS IX subpage of the NASS webpage, and established a new subpage for the upcoming conference, NASS X (Kaunas June 2017, abstract deadline November 30th).

NASS board meeting attended, chaired

On October 10th I attended - and chaired, and wrote the minutes of - the board meeting of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies (NASS). The main topics concerned deciding on and planning the 10th conference of NASS, which is to be held in June 2017 in Kaunas, Lithuania.

NASS X held in conjunction with 13th World Congress of Semiotics; abstract deadline November 30

The 10th Conference of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies (NASS), "Nordic-Baltic links, networks and domains in semiotics and beyond" will be held in conjunction with the 13th World Congress of Semiotics (Kaunas, Lituania, June 26-30th 2017). The Call for Papers, with abstract deadline November 30th, is featured in the 9th newsletter of NASS (now online).

9th newsletter of NASS finished

Today I have taken part in finishing the 9th newsletter of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies, which I edit along with Inesa Sahakyan.

31st of March final deadline of NASS IX

The organisers of the 9th conference of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies (NASS) are accepting abstract submissions until March 31st.

See also:

Still possible to submit to NASS IX

Still possible to submit to NASS IX

The 9th conference of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies, to take place in Tartu August 17-20, is still accepting abstracts (even though the deadline has formally expired). 

This implies that abstracts are still welcome to the two sessions I take part in chairing:

 - Cognitive semiotics meets biosemiotics / Biosemiotics meets cognitive semiotics

 - The study of future umwelten: umwelt futurology

For instruction on abstract submission, see the conference webpage.

Abstract for NASS IX: "The future Umwelten of wolves, sheep and people in Scandinavia"

I have just composed and submitted the abstract below to the organisers of the 9th conference of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies (NASS) (Tartu, August 17-20).

***

The future Umwelten of wolves, sheep and people in Scandinavia

By Morten Tønnessen, University of Stavanger 

Paper proposal submitted to the theme session “The study of future umwelten: umwelt futurology”

ABSTRACT

In Scandinavia, wolf management has been surrounded by conflict ever since the return of the grey wolf about a generation ago. While the presence of wolves is perceived to be in conflict with hunting practices, such as the use of free-roaming hunting dogs, in both Sweden and Norway, in Norway the “wolf wars” are by the general public especially associated with sheep´s grazing in outer pastures. In the Norwegian context, the wolf has become a symbol of large predators in general (which in Norway include brown bears, lynx and wolverines), and a scapegoat for certain societal developments that threaten traditional, small-scale husbandry practices (Tønnessen 2011).

In this paper, I will sketch selected future scenarios for the Umwelten of wolves, sheep and people by making use of the Umwelt theory of Jakob von Uexküll (e.g. Uexküll 1956 [1934/1940]; cf. also the concise, thorough and critical scientific monograph Brentari 2015) in combination with various future projections and scenarios from other fields.  These will include demographical projections, scenarios for climate change, trends related to the industrialization of agriculture in Scandinavia, and assumptions about future land use and husbandry practices. This paper will focus on developments in a generational perspective, until year 2100 or so.

In the scope of the presentation, I aim to outline a mainstream, “business as usual” scenario as well as an alternative, more preferable scenario. One of the basic assumptions of this paper is that in order to ascertain that conservation efforts are successful in the long run, we must understand the cultural semiotics, whether local or global, underpinning the symbolicity of the wolf. Aspects of the wolf´s symbolicity are ancient and go thousands of years back – these in effect constitute a quite stable and resistant cultural imagery.  Whenever the wolf´s symbolicity is characteristically modern, on the other hand, societal developments in the 21st century will likely change the way we think about wolves in the future.

Acknowledgement: This work has been carried out thanks to the support of the research project Animals in Changing Environments: Cultural Mediation and Semiotic Analysis (EEA Norway Grants/Norway Financial Mechanism 2009–2014 under project contract no EMP151).

References

Brentari, Carlo 2015. Jakob von Uexküll: The Discovery of the Umwelt Between Biosemiotics and Theoretical Biology (Biosemiotics 9). Dordrecht: Springer.

Tønnessen, Morten 2011. Umwelt Transition and Uexküllian Phenomenology – An Ecosemiotic Analysis of Norwegian Wolf Management (= Dissertationes Semioticae Universitatis Tartuensis 16). Doctoral dissertation. Tartu: Tartu University Press. Introduction available online.

von Uexküll, J. (1956 [1934/1940]). Streifzüge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen: Ein Bilderbuch unsichtbarer Welten. Bedeutungslehre. Hamburg: Rowohlt.

Abstract for NASS IX: "Agency in biosemiotics and enactivism"

I have just composed and submitted the abstract below to the organisers of the 9th conference of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies (NASS) (Tartu, August 17-20).

***

Agency in biosemiotics and enactivism

By Morten Tønnessen, University of Stavanger

Paper proposal submitted to the theme session “Cognitive semiotics meets biosemiotics / Biosemiotics meets cognitive semiotics”

ABSTRACT

While several fields has a pragmatic interest in the notion of agency qua causal, biosemiotics has an ontological interest in the occurrence of agency in the living realm at large. Although there is currently no consensus in the biosemiotic community on what constitutes a semiotic agent, i.e. an agent in the context of semiosis (the action of signs), most respondents to a recent survey agree that core attributes of an agent include goal-directedness, self-governed activity, processing of semiosis and choice of action, with these features being vital for the functioning of the living system in question. 

In this chapter I seek to compare the biosemiotic understanding(s) of agency with enactive understanding(s) of agency. Despite considerable overlapping in views and outlook, there are sharp differences in how agency is understood in biosemiotics and enactivism. For example, while biosemioticians typically acknowledge agency in all living systems, whether large or small, enactivists tend for the most part to refer to individual agency, and often with stricter qualifications than biosemiotics makes use of. Gallagher´s emphasis on some organisms´ “sense of agency” exemplifies enactivism´s tendency to focus on conscious animals, and to prioritise theorizing about self-awareness rather than awareness or experience in a broader sense.

Acknowledgements: This work has been carried out thanks to the support of the research project Animals in Changing Environments: Cultural Mediation and Semiotic Analysis (EEA Norway Grants/Norway Financial Mechanism 2009–2014 under project contract no EMP151). Parts of this text have previously been published in Biosemiotics (Tønnessen, Morten 2015. The Biosemiotic Glossary Project: Agent, agency. To appear in Biosemiotics 8(1); published online January 21st 2015 (doi: 10.1007/s12304-015-9229-0), with Appendix – Supplementary Material – available online).

7th Nordic semiotics (NASS) newsletter prepared

This week I have taken part in composing the 7th newsletter of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies (NASS), along with fellow Newsletter editor Inesa Sahakyan.

NASS webpage updated

Today I have updated the webpage of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies (NASS). The updates include the 6th newsletter of NASS (Autumn 2014), and the 2nd Call for papers for NASS IX (Tartu, 17-20 August 2015 - abstract deadline March 2nd) - with a link to the eight accepted session topics.

Session proposal for NASS IX: “Cognitive semiotics meets Biosemiotics/Biosemiotics meets Cognitive Semiotics”

Today Göran Sonesson and I finished and submitted the session proposal below to the organisers of NASS IX, which will be held in Tartu August 17-20th 2015.

Proposal for session at Tartu Summer School of Semiotics 2015 – SEMIOTIC (UN-)PREDICTABILITY/the IX Conference of Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies

 

Chairs: Göran Sonesson and Morten Tønnessen

 

Title: “Cognitive semiotics meets Biosemiotics/Biosemiotics meets Cognitive Semiotics”

 

We invite contributions that go beyond purely anthropocentric notions of meaning from the perspectives of either cognitive semiotics or biosemiotics. Both cognitive semiotics and biosemiotics acknowledge that some meanings occur in contexts that are not only human – i.e., in contexts involving non-humans, be they animals or other creatures. There is clearly an overlap between the two approaches, which may explain the fact that several prominent scholars conceive of themselves as being both cognitive semioticians and biosemioticians at the same time. For other scholars, however, several contentious issues oppose the two approaches.

 

Biosemiotics and cognitive semiotics have tended to disagree on core issues within semiotics. One of these is the conception of sign – what is a sign? What constitutes a sign? What is the simplest sign? Or are there perhaps meanings which are not signs? Is this more than a question of definitions, convenient for the kind of research developed in the two approaches? Relatedly, these two traditions have tended to disagree on the semiotic threshold(s): Where in the world of our experience (or nature, as biosemioticians would tend to say) do we encounter phenomena that we can rightly describe as sign exchange? Or, perhaps, in a more general sense, as exchange of meanings? What part of the world is of a semiotic nature, in what sense of semiotic, and what part is not? Despite affinity and overlap in theoretical outlook, such disagreements have led to radically different takes on e.g. what counts as human–animal communication, and to what extent reciprocal understanding between humans and animals is possible.

 

In addition to contributions that explore different meanings that are not exclusively human in their naturally occurring range, we welcome contributions that aim to bridge the gap between biosemiotics and cognitive semiotics.  What common ground is there currently for these two highly profiled approaches within semiotics? And what further common ground is it possible to develop, to the benefit of both approaches, by way of adopting shared terminology etc.?

 

As indicated above, the current session welcomes both case studies with a link to either cognitive semiotics or biosemiotics, and papers of a more theoretical or methodological nature that aim to discuss the affinity between cognitive semiotics and biosemiotics.

NASS board meeting held

Today I have taken part in the board meeting of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies (NASS). Among the topics were next year´s conference in Tartu, NASS IX.

Early human Umwelt article revised

Early in April I finished revising my article "The ontogeny of the embryonic, foetal and infant human Umwelt", which I have submitted to Sign Systems Studies in relation to their planned special issue on the theme of the 8th conference of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies.

See also:

Early human Umwelt article to be revised

Early human Umwelt article accepted for publication