Spartacus issuing press release on Norwegian HAS anthology

Today Spartacus forlag/Scandinavian Academic press distributed a press release announcing the Human-Animal Studies anthology 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]. This book, which I have co-edited, will be published Wednesday May 15th, and on the same day there is a release event in Oslo (4 pm). The full text of the press release is available in my Norwegian language blog Utopisk Realisme.

The publishing house has further updated the book's webpage with link to the event 15/5, and also links to the press release on its press page. A printed version of the press release is being published during this week, and review copies distributed.

Norwegian HAS anthology: Reference and final front and back page

Here's the cover page and back page of the Human-Animal Studies anthology I am co-editing which will be released on May 15th:

The change made today involves reordering the names of the editors in line with what we agreed on. The correct reference to the book is thus:

Sollund, Ragnhild, Morten Tønnessen and 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.

Norwegian HAS anthology proof-read; to be released May 15th

The last few weeks and months the other two editors and myself have been working with preparing Hvem er villest i landet her? Råskap mot dyr og natur i antropocen - menneskets tidsalder [Who is the wildes one in the country here? Brutality against animals and nature in the Anthropocene, the age of Man], for publication. The publication date has now been set to May 15th.

Work done since last post on this volume, in March, includes regular proof-reading (involving all contributors), proof-reading of the print-ready PDF, and - today - revision of the index.

Final version of cover:

Minding Animals Norway mentioned in academic article

Minding Animals Norway, which I chair, is referred to in Tore Fougner's article "Dyr i IP-faget" [Animals in International relations], which is published in the first issue of 2013 of the Norwegian academic journal Internasjonal politikk (pp. 85-97; the mention is made on p. 86). Fougner cites Minding Animals Norway's mission statement as part of a broader presentation of the interdisciplinary field of Human-Animal Studies, where attempts are made to bridge activism and academia.

My author page at Scandinavian Academic Press

My author page at Scandinavian Academic Press is now complete with a short bio and a profile picture.

See also Årets forfattere [This year's authors]; and a previous post in this blog, Norwegian HAS anthology; Title, announcement.

Norwegian HAS anthology: Title, announcement

The Norwegian Human-Animal Studies collection of articles that I am co-editing with UiO professors in criminology Ragnhild Sollund and Guri Larsen, which is due for publication in April, has been announced on the webpages of the publisher, Spartacus/Scandinavian Academic Press.

Reference and final title:

Sollund, Ragnhild, Morten Tønnessen and Guri Larsen (eds) 2013. Hvem er villest i landet her? Råskap mot dyr og natur i antropocen, menneskets tidsalder [Who is the wildest one in the country here? /Brutality/ against animals and nature in the Anthropocene, the age of man]. Oslo: Spartacus/Scandinavian Academic Press.

Cover draft:

Norwegian HAS anthology approaching publication

The Norwegian Human-Animal Studies anthology Hvem er villest i landet her? Menneskets forbruk og kontroll av dyr [Who is wildest in this country here? Humans' consumption and control of animals] is approaching publication (scheduled for April). I am editing this book along with Ragnhild Sollund and Guri Larsen, who are both professors of criminology at the University of Oslo. We received preliminary feedback from the publisher, Spartacus forlag/Scandinavian Academic Press, before Christmas and detailed feedback just after New Year. At that stage all chapters were accepted for publication. We re-submitted a slightly revised manuscript (the revision involving all contributors), which now also includes a subject index, this week.

In addition to being one of the editors of this HAS-collection, I contribute with two chapters plus to the introduction. My chapters are called "Hvem er villest i landet her? - Et ulveliv" [Who is wildest in this country here? A wolf's life] and "Menneskeveldet" [The human empire - cf. my English language article The Global Species].

Webpage for Norwegian animal ethics conference

The forthcoming conference Dyreetikkonferansen (the animal ethics conference - to be held in Oslo, Norway, September 21st) now has a website: http://dyreetikkonferansen.no/. You can read about the conference (in Norwegian) here and register here.

Dyreetikkonferansen aims to be an annual conference. The topic this year is "The animal behind the food and the human behind the consumer". I am part of the organising team (via Minding Animals Norway).

Talk at HAS rhetorics workshop scheduled for May 29

My forthcoming talk "Animals Craving for Meaning in the Anthropocene: A Perspective on the Global Semiocide" at "The Rhetoric of Human-Animal Relations" workshop (SUM, UiO, May 29-30) has been scheduled for presentation Tuesday May 29th at 16.15-16.45, as the last talk of that day and of the session "Mute Brutes that Hoot in the Dark Are the Moot Root of Quotation marks".

A 10-15 pages paper is due by May 15th.

Nordic HAS portal

Minding Animals Norway has launched a Nordic Human-Animal Studies Portal. For now its coverage of Norway is a lot better than that of the other Nordic countries, but hopefully that will improve as we receive suggestions from others. The portal has initially been launched in Norwegian.

The portal includes the following categories:

* Research networks and email lists

* HAS education and courses

* Journals and magazines on animals

* Environmental and animal advocacy NGOs

* NGOs and agencies working for animals

* Businesses and networks with HAS competence

* Literature, journals and blogs related to HAS

* Persons with competence within HAS

Abstract accepted for Minding Animals conference: "The contemporary symbolic construction of Norway's Big Bad Wolf"

Today i received a formal notification that my abstract "The contemporary symbolic construction of Norway's Big Bad Wolf" has been accepted for oral presentation at the second Minding Animals conference, which is to take place in Utrecht, the Netherlands, July 3-6.

See also my note on a similar notification concerning another abstract, "Biosemiotics and animal ethics".

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THE CONTEMPORARY SYMBOLIC CONSTRUCTION OF NORWAY'S BIG BAD WOLF

Morten Tønnessen

Current carnivore management would not have met such hostile resistance from an outspoken minority on the Norwegian countryside, had it not been for some current developments which are all too seldom related to the wolf conservation discourse. Notably, since 1999 one third of all farms in Norway have closed down. In reality the wolves are not blamed for the relatively few sheep they kill — they have come to symbolize the threats, dangers and decline facing Norwegian agriculture. The wolf, in short, has become a scapegoat for certain societal developments.

The symbolic value of wolves and sheep has historically often been juxtaposed, especially in the context of the Bible. In cultural terms, hardly any animals are as loaded with symbolic value as the wolf and the sheep. And the shared importance is no coincidence, since the symbolism of the two animals has frequently developed in explicit opposition to each other. In the Scandinavian context in general and the Norwegian in particular the wolf’s vivid symbolicity in contemporary times is enforced by the occurrence of conspiracy theories. Many of the fiercest opponents of wolf conservation believe that researchers and the authorities intentionally misrepresent the population number of wolves, and distrust official reassurances that the wolf does not pose much danger to people. In result, the human perception of wolves has in large measure decoupled from ecological reality.

This decoupling of perception and empirical circumstances does not only apply to conspiracy theorists. Whenever national Norwegian media cover predation on sheep, for instance, the wolf is typically pictured for illustrative purposes — despite the fact that wolverines, lynx, and brown bears over time all account for a much greater percentage of predation on sheep. The wolf has thus become a poster boy for large predators in general. What wolves are taken to signify, in short, depends not so much on actual wolf ecology as it does on certain cultural/societal developments. These are, justly or unfairly, associated with the presence of wolves, and with governmental conservation policies. What the wolf is taken to represent as a sign — what it is taken to be a sign of — has become the decisive driver in the Norwegian wolf management discourse.

The sheep’s symbolicity is in the Norwegian context grounded in open landscapes, which are typically taken to be intrinsically Norwegian. The idea of the Norwegian nation is built on the memory of an initial clearing and cultivation of the original (pre-Norwegian) landscape. We see this plainly in the two first verses of Ivar Aasen’s “The Norwegian”, which is in effect treated as a national anthem.

The symbolicity of sheep in Norway is effectively associated with the symbolicity of outer pastures, which have been crucial in Norwegian sheep husbandry but are now under pressure, partly due to a general move from extensive to intensive farming practices. The common perception in rural areas is that outer pastures are being devalued, and that traditional Norwegian farming practices are under threat. In visual imagery, this is best expressed by a phenomenon called ‘gjengroing’, imperfectly translated to English as overgrowth. Overgrowth in this sense implies that an originally open, cleared landscape is taken over by forest, weeds and other vegetation without direct agricultural value. Such a landscape, with growing irrelevance (so to speak), reduced utility and (notably, in perceptual terms) an obstructed view, has become a symbol of the hardships of rural areas and Norwegian agriculture. Our thesis is that it is this perception which is at the base of the contemporary symbolic construction of the Big Bad Wolf in Norway.

Academic travels planned for March 18-22

I have arranged tickets for a trip which will March 18th to 22nd take me from Kristiansand via Oslo to Stavanger and back to Kristiansand. I will spend two days in Oslo, where I will take part in a one-day work seminar in relation with the HAS anthology Hvem er villest i landet her? [Who's the wildest in the country here?] on Monday the 19th and attend a meeting on Dyreetikkonferansen (The animal ethics conference) on Tuesday 20th. After an 8-hour train trip I will then spend two days in Stavanger, where I will teach Wednesday 21nd and Thursday 22nd plus meet up with a couple of Minding Animals colleagues the 21st and meet with an event company in Stavanger on the 22nd.

Minding Animals Norway founded; me chair, treasurer

At the last section of the Shared worlds workshop arranged in Oslo October 14-15 2011, a very first general/annual meeting for Minding Animals Norway, through which MAN was founded as an NGO (as one of the first national bodies of Minding Animals International), was held. Not many attended, but a board of six was elected:

* Chair (and for the time being treasurer): Morten Tønnessen

* Deputy chair: Kristin Armstrong Oma

* Secretary: Rhys Evans

* Webmaster: Rune Ellefsen

* Member of the board: Frode Bakke Bjerkevik

* Member of the board: Runar Næss [later withdrew]

Regulations and an activity plan for 2012 were decided on. According to the mission statement, MAN will function as a bridge between academia and activism, and provide a Norwegian forum for the interdisciplinary field that studies human-animal relations, environmental issues included. MAN aims to facilitate discussion between the various interests in this rapidly growing field of research in a way that will improve the status of non-human animals and increase understanding of Man as a natural being.

Among the substantial decisions were these:

* MAN will be a member organization (with annual and lifetime membership)

* MAN will arrange an annual research seminar; and supports and will get involved in Kristian Bjørkdahl's (SUM, UiO) broad HAS conference initiative, which aims to establish an annual conference series involving researchers, activists and people with a livelihood in animal husbandry etc.

* MAN will occasionally produce letters to the editor and chronicles

* MAN will occasionally produce hearing statements (submit "høringsuttalelser" to Norwegian ministeries etc.)

Blurb on horse panel

This is Rhys Evans' blurb on the panel on horses and humans at the Shared worlds workshop arranged in Oslo October 14-15 2011 (see also the program of the workshop).

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Panel on the shared worlds of horses and humans

Humans and horses share a partnership which is unique in many ways. It is a partnership which has a deep historical heritage and new contemporary relevance. Historically, humans and horses have worked together to produce food and other commodities, to produce cities, civilizations, and even empires. Now they work together to produce health and well being, lifestyle balance, appreciation of nature, and self-actualization in an increasingly urbanized world. Where the population of horses suffered a precipitous decline with the advent of mechanized farming and industry, now the number of horses in developed economies is once again growing significantly. Much of this is built around the unique partnership forged between horses and humans. The size, willfulness and behavioral possibilities of horses make them different from other ‘companion animals’ and together the two species build unique worlds out of their different but shared potentials.

Yet much of this world-building has been viewed primarily through an anthropocentric lens. What are these shared worlds which the two create, and how can we know what our horses want, what matters to them, and importantly, how they benefit from the partnership? This Roundtable attempts to address the issue of ways of knowing – what do we know, how can we know, and what can we do with that knowledge in order to make the partnership more equal and more satisfying for both parties?

Final program for "Shared worlds" workshop

This is the final version of the program for the Shared worlds workshop (Oslo, October 14-15 2011) arranged by what was during that workshop founded as Minding Animals Norway. I prepared a program booklet, distributed during the workshop, on October 13th.

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Program

Friday October 14

09.30-10.00 Registration

Chair of morning session: Morten Tønnessen

10.00-11.00 Rod Bennison: “Considering the exploitation of animals in sport, and understanding the ‘Sport of Queens’”

10.00-10.45 Plenary speech

10.45-11.00 Q & A

11.00-12.00 Panel on the shared worlds of horses and humans

Facilitator: Kristin Oma Armstrong

Panelists: Kristin Oma Armstrong, Lynda Birke, Rhys Evans [the latter by video link]

11.00-11.15 Video introduction by Rhys Evans

11.15-12.00 Panel discussion

12.00-12.15 Coffee break

12.15-13.15 Liv Emma Thorsen: “Shared worlds? Animals in natural history museums”

12.15-13.00 Plenary speech

13.00-13.15 Q & A

13.15-14.45 Lunch break

Chair of afternoon session: Rune Ellefsen

14.45-15.45 Nelly Mäekivi: “(Mis)perceptions in shared environments: The case of zoos”

14.45-15.30 Plenary speech

15.30-15.45 Q & A

15.45-16.45 Tora Holmberg: “Sharing the lives of many: Urban controversies over animal hoarding and animal rescue”

15.45-16.30 Plenary speech

16.30-16.45 Q & A

16.45-17.00 Coffee break

17.00-18.00 Roundtable on the shared worlds of wolves and humans

Facilitator: Morten Tønnessen

Confirmed roundtable participants: Runar Næss, Antonio Poleo, Ketil Skogen, Morten Tønnessen

17.00-17.10 Introduction by Morten Tønnessen

17.10-18.00 Roundtable discussion

Saturday October 15

Chair of morning session: Rod Bennison

11.00-11.15 Rod Bennison informs about Minding Animals International and the 2012 Minding Animals conference in Utrecht

11.15-12.15 Position note workshop on the relation between academia and activism, part I

11.15-11.30 Video introduction by Rhys Evans

11.30-11.45 Philosophical practice: Questioning of Rod Bennison (by Morten Tønnessen) on his honest, deeply held beliefs and intuitions on human-animal relations

11.45-12.15 Group work

12.15-13.15 Panel on the relation between academia and activism in the context of HAS

Facilitator: Rune Ellefsen

Panelists: Kristin Oma Armstrong (UiO), Kristian Bjørkdahl (SUM – UiO), Rune Ellefsen (UiO), Hilde Valbjørn Hagelin (Dyrevernalliansen))

13.15-13.30 Coffee break

13.30-15.30 Position note workshop part II

15.30-17.00 Lunch break

17.00-18.00 General meeting of Minding Animals Norway

Norwegian HAS anthology: Revised book project description

The Norwegian HAS anthology I an involved with, with co-editors Ragnhild Sollund and Guri Larsen and in contact with the publisher Spartacus, has gotten a new work title: Hvem er villest i landet her? Dyr som objekter i en menneskedominert tidsepoke [Who's the wildest one in the country here? Animals as objects in an era dominated by humans].

We have further written an all new book project description - concise one, 1 page only, with an Anthropocene theme. Currently awaiting feedback from the publisher.

Funding of Norwegian HAS anthology granted

Yesterday I was informed that the Norwegian Human-Animal Studies anthology I am editing along with criminologists Ragnhild Sollund and Guri Larsen has been granted 30.000 NOK (approximately 3.850 Euro, or 5.370 USD) in support by Fritt Ord, The Freedom of Speech Foundation (Norway). The funding will go to the publisher, Spartacus. As happy as we are to have received this funding, we most likely still need to secure further funding to make the book project materialize. But this is a good start, and shows that the project is viable.

See also my previous post on this anthology. A revised book project description is due August 15.

Brief update on Norwegian HAS anthology

While I have been travelling abroad, my two fellow editors, Ragnhild Sollund and Guri Larsen, have been in a meeting with our prospective publisher, Spartacus. The work title has on the suggestion by our publisher-editor been changed from "Der natur møter kultur" to "Vill, villere, villest". During the summer we will rework the project description so as to focus more consistently on instrumental approaches to nature which are typical for our time. We still depend on getting funding to make the publication happen.

Update on Norwegian HAS anthology

The publisher Spartacus has responded to our book proposal for a Norwegian Human-Animal Studies anthology (entitled Der natur møter kultur - mennesket og andre dyr) that they might be interested, given a) a sharper focus and b) 100.000 NOK in funding.

We are considering our options...

Mapping human impact proofread and ready to go

Today I have proof-read my article "Mapping human impact: Expanding horizons - Interdisciplinary integration", and accepted a number of stilistic changes suggested by the technical editor/language editor of the CECT II proceedings. In the process I have further given titles to the three figures involved:
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Figure 1. Ontological map of humankind’s traditional relationship to animal species
Figure 2. Ontological map of some of the author's significant relationships.
Figure 3. Sketch of global ontological map, centred on the human species.