Part of technologies of government network application

I have agreed to be part of an application to establish a Norwegian research network on contested technologies of government in biodiversity management, initiated by NTNU.

Appointed as member of PhD Evaluation Committee at SLU

Today I have been notified that the Chairman of Postgraduate Studies Board at Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) has appointed me to act as member of the Evaluation Committee at Erica von Essens´s public defence of her thesis for the doctor’s degree. The defense will take place September 16th.

See also:
To be member of PhD evaluation committee

Wolf Symposium linking to interview on Swedish Radio

The webpage of the Wolf Symposium now links to Sara Sällströms report for Swedish public radio "När vilda djur blir försöksdjur" [When wild animals become laboratory animals], which features interviews with me, Katarina Cvek and Olof Liberg.

Interview on GPS-tracking of wolves on Swedish radio

Today an interview with me, Katarina Cvek (pictured below, right) and Olof Liberg aired on Swedish public radio Sveriges Radio (P1), in the program "Vetandets värld" [The world of knowledge]. The 17m interview was conducted by Sara Sällström. Link to podcast is available from "När vilda djur blir försöksdjur" [When wild animals become laboratory animals].

Interview on GPS-tagging of wolves to air on Swedish radio April 4th

On March 8th I was interviewed by Sweden´s Vetenskapsradion [science radio], at Sveriges Radio, the Swedish public radio, along with Katarina Cvek (Djurförsöksetiska nämnden Uppsala, SLU) - see below. I have been informed by Sara Sällström, who conducted the interview, that it will likely air Monday April 4th at 12.10, in the program "Vetandets värld" [the world of knowledge], on channel P1.

See also:

Interviewed by Sweden´s science radio

Two papers accepted for presentation at "Animals in the Anthropocene" conference

A week ago I was formally informed that two abstracts I am co-author of have been accepted as basis for oral presentation at the September 17-19 University of Stavanger conference "Animals in the Anthropocene: Human-animal relations in a changing semiosphere". The two abstracts, both of which are co-authored with Paul Thibault, are titled "Proto-language in wolves" and "Human Perceptions of Wolves and other Animals in Contemporary Norway" respectively.

I am the chair of the Local organising committee of the conference and have been coordinating the work of the Scientific advisory committee, but have of course not taken part in the evaluation of these two abstracts.

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.

First draft of chapter "The Semiotics of Wild Carnivore Management" composed

A few days ago I uploaded/submitted a first draft of my chapter "The Semiotics of Wild Carnivore Management", which is to be published in Spring 2016 as part of the collective monograph Semiotic Methods in the Study of Human-Animal Interactions (Tartu: Tartu University Press). The chapter was previously work-titled "Semiotics of Management of Wild Carnivores".

A full, edited paper is due May 31st.

Symbolic construction of Big Bad Wolf abstract posted in Minding Animals blog

Today "The symbolic construction of the Big Bad Wolf in contemporary Scandinavia" was posted in the blog of Minding Animals Norway. The text is an abstract for my upcoming presentation at the First Norwegian Research Seminar – Animals in Changing Environments: Cultural mediation and Semiotic Analysis (December 13, 2013 – University of Stavanger, Norway). You can register by sending an email.

The text has already been posted here in Utopian Realism.

Norwegian HAS anthology: Reference to two book chapters in introduction chapter

The introduction chapter to the recently published Norwegian Human-Animal Studies anthology includes references to my two book chapters in the same book. Reference to the introduction chapter (which I have co-authored):

Sollund, Ragnhild, Morten Tønnessen og Guri Larsen 2013. Introduksjon: Fra bruksdyr til dyreverd [Introduction: From animals of utility to animal dignity] [p. 18, 26 (Tønnessen 2013f) and p. 25 (Tønnessen 2013e)]. In Sollund, Ragnhild, Morten Tønnessen og Guri Larsen (eds) 2013, Hvem er villest i landet her? Råskap mot dyr og natur i antropocen, menneskets tidsalder [Who is wildest in this country here? Brutality towards animals and nature in the Anthropocene, the age of Man], Oslo: Spartacus Forlag/Scandinavian Academic Press, 9-36.

Here "Tønnessen 2013f" refers to "Hvem er villest i landet her? Et ulveliv" [Who is wildest in this country here? A wolf's life] and "Tønnessen 2013e" to "Menneskeveldet" [The human empire]. The references on pp. 25 and 26 envelop half page summaries of the two chapters. Excerpt concerning the reference on p. 18 (my translation):

Both our industrial animal husbandry and our control regimes in wildlife management has the character of being distinctly rampant (see Tønnessen's chapter 4).

See also:

Reference to my contributions to Norwegian HAS anthology

Collaboration with Ilmar Rootsi concluded

My collaboration with Estonian Ilmar Rootsi (which has been assisted by Nelly Mäekivi) has come to an end, since it today emerged we have a fundamental disagreement about a key source for our planned but now cancelled article on people killed by wolves historically in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Estonia.

This means we will not co-write any article. However, I have offered assistance in making sure a translation is good quality if he wants to present more of his own work in English.

Article on formal/informal predator management to be submitted to Materialisten

While in Oslo in mid-October I was invited by the editor of Norwegian journal Materialisten, an interdisciplinary journal devoted to scholarly and social critique, to submit an article in early 2012. I later scheduled with editor Cecilie Høigård (a criminologist) that my contribution, worktitled "Formell og uformell rovviltforvaltning [eventuelt ulveforvaltning] i Norge [eventuelt Skandinavia] [Formal and informal predator management [possibly: wolf management] in Norway [possibly: Scandinavia]], should be submitted by February 15th 2012.

Carnivore settlement? Nope

Tonight at around 3 a.m. the negotiations involving all political parties represented in the Norwegian parliament, which had been aiming to reach a new carnivore settlement replacing that of 2004 (effective from 2005), ended without results. The negotiations were supposed to conclude before Christmas 2010. After several delays, and critique from the opposition for the coalition government's lack of any joint proposal, it was said that the negotiations would conclude before the parliament's summer break. Instead, the negotiations are now over. And after a year or so of conflicting expectations and promises, there is no policy review whatsoever. Nada. There will be no deal. It is totally uncertain as of today when a new attempt will be made - perhaps in a couple of years, when Sweden moves on with their policy review. In the meantime everything is as it was - except that nobody wants it to stay like it is - a status quo that benefits neither carnivores nor farmers nor sheep. In this particular case stasis - inaction - is not an acceptable compromise, but an outright failure to deal with this whole problematique.

Norwegian wolf management is my PhD case study. I am covering historical times before and after the wolf got status as protected species, plus contemporary times (2006-2011).

Editorial presentation of "I, wolf"

The editorial presentation of my article "I, wolf: The ecology of existence" is to be found on page 14 in the introduction of Ane Faugstad Aarø and Johannes Servan, in Environment, Embodiment and Gender, and reads:

Morten Tønnessen describes in his essay "I, Wolf: The Ecology of Existence" the 'Umwelt' of wolves in Scandinavia, the life conditions that have led to the threat of extinction among wolves, as well as the policies and cultural values that oppose the existence of a very small population of wolves in Scandinavia. The myths of the threats that wolves represent in a community that has been based historically on sheep farming are balanced by Tønnessen's account of the semiotic Umwelt of wolves and their ecological alienation in this area today.

My bionote is on page 338.

Invitation to give keynote address in Uppsala

I have been invited to give one of the six keynote addresses at the Uppsala Minding Animals Pre-Conference event - and accepted. The academic event, which is titled Zoo-ethnographies, is to be arranged October 17-18.

Worktitle: "Two global species and their age-old foe: The semiotic eth(n)ology of wolves, sheep and people".

Abstract to Sydney ethology workshop

Bad dog: An Uexküllian analysis of Norwegian Wolf Management

Morten Tønnessen

The title of my PhD project is “Umwelt transition: Uexküllian phenomenology – An ecosemiotic analysis of Norwegian wolf management”. The starting point for my research is the Umwelt theory of Jakob von Uexküll (1864-1944), which I interpret as a genuine theory of phenomenology. Core notions of phenomenology – ‘subjectivity’, ‘autonomy’ and ‘intentionality’ included – therefore have to be understood in a more-than-human sense.

What is “subjective biology” today? In my work, the concept of Umwelt transition represents an Uexküllian notion of environmental change. This might be revisionist, since Uexküll himself envisioned a harmonious nature in balance. While I find it necessary to revise Uexküll on this point, on other points, I hold, it suffices to apply his theory. One example is his notion of Berufsumwelten (the Umwelten of professions), a subcategory of human Umwelten – in my work I depict e.g. the Berufsumwelt of Norwegian sheep farmers. On yet other points, Uexküll’s theory needs clarification. Two important precisations (conceptual clarifications): an Umwelt is organism-specific, rather than species-specific; and must be taken to refer to an existential realm/”inner states”. Umwelt theory also needs to be developed. Focusing on universally applicable Umwelt terminology, I introduce various notions of aggregate Umwelten (Umwelt trajectories, total Umwelten and common-Umwelten), the concept of existential universals, and a distinction between communal being and distinctive being.

The time frame of my case study is 1845-2010. It thus spans both historical extermination campaigns and the current management regime aiming at conservation. I conceptualize the formal and the informal human interaction with/intervention in wolf ecology, and the wolves’ response. To what extent is the wolf a favored species, in practice? By contextualizing such a question, I pinpoint characteristics of the semiotics of the ecological crisis. One assumption is that humankind’s domestication of animals and plants can be taken as archetypical for our attempted planet-scale taming of the wild. My analysis is conducted by way of an Umwelt mapping of the lifeworlds of wolves, sheep and people, with emphasis on historical Umwelt transitions. In the process I present maps of the ontological niches of these three creatures.

In Scandinavia, in part invasive monitoring justifies questions such as this one: Is a wolf wild as long as it does not know that it is being thoroughly handled? My field trips to Polar Zoo and Langedrag Nature Park and Mountain Farm suggest that socialized wolves come in many forms. What is it like to be a wolf? And what is it like to be a dog?

Preliminary conclusions:

1. The Scandinavian wolf/sheep strife is largely a symbolic construction (cultural analysis is key).

2. Ecological and cultural developments have basically decoupled (there is, in other words, a cultural drift towards pure symbolicity).

3. The long-term goal of wildlife management should be to restore its independent viability. One success criterion: to minimize anthropogenic mortality.

4. My case study demonstrates that Umwelt theory is applicable in a modern ecological setting, but in need of updating and further development.

SKANDULV seminar - belated 'report'

In mid-November I was planning to go to Trondheim for a research stay, but got the chance to partake in the annual research seminar of SKANDULV, the Scandinavian wolf project, so I went there instead (Nov. 15-18). The seminar took place at Strömsbergs säteri & konferens close to Västerås, an hour's drive from Stockholm.

At the seminar, I gave a talk entitled 'En økosemiotisk analyse av norsk ulveforvaltning' (An ecosemiotic analysis of Norwegian wolf management). I also got the chance to meet a lot of wolf ethologists whose work I had previously only read, not heard presented in person.

References, green criminology

My article The legality and ethical legitimacy of wolf hunting in Scandinavia is mentioned as one out of six articles in 'øko-global kriminologi' (eco-global criminology) from a NsFK research seminar report on the Nordic eco-global criminology site.

The latest Nordic green criminology newsletter, administered by Rune Ellefsen, mentions these six articles indirectly and also the Oslo Minding Animals event to take place October 14th, 2011.

Criminology publication - wolf hunting

I have just found out that my article "The legality and ethical legitimacy of wolf hunting in Scandinavia" has just been published in the Research seminar report 52 (pp 65-72) of the Scandinavian Council for Criminology. Publication date is (approximately) October.

The paper is the revised outcome of my presentation at Hønefoss in May.

It is one of six papers in the section "Økologisk kriminalitet" (Ecological crime), along with papers by Guri Larsen, Sigurd S. Dybing, Rune Ellefsen, Nicolay B. Johansen ("The problem with green criminology") and Per-Anders Svärd.

Contents:
* Intro
* From extermination campaigns to coservation policies
* Perception and symbolism
* Hunting ethics
* Concluding observations

Brief report from research visit/Oslo I

Earlier this week, Mon 11 - Wed 13, I conducted my first research visit to Oslo (cf. recent plans). Activities included:

* meeting with wolf-socializer Runar Næss
* meeting with statistician Espen Søbye
* research at the library of Statistics Norway, the National Library of Norway and the library of the Norwegian parliament

In the process I gathered quite a lot of more or less historical material on Norwegian wolf legislation etc., some of it dating back to 1845. Both encounters as well proved to be very informative.