Report from Animals & Philosophy roundtable by John Hadley published

John Hadley, who chaired the roundtable/stucy circle session "Animals & Philosophy" at Minding Animals 2 in Utrecht, the Netherlands last summer, has published a summary of that roundtable in the newsletter of the International Society for Environmental Ethics (ISEE). The report appears on pp. 37-38 of Vol. 23, No. 3 Winter 2012. I was the scribe of this roundtable.

Peer review for Minding Animals/four journals conducted

This weekend I conducted peer review of about 60 abstracts that were submitted for the second international Minding Animals conference (Utrecht, July 2012), as one of six volunteer reviewers. I recommended some 30 papers for publication. Full-length papers will likely appear in the journals Society and Animals, Animals, Relations, and Journal of Bioethical Inquiry. Due to other commitments past and present I have not volunteered to be a (co-)guest-editor of one of these four Special Issues.

Google Group to discuss annual Nordic HAS conference

This email was distributed to some 20 people today:

Dear all,

it was a pleasure to see so many of you (us) at our Nordic Human-Animal Studies networking session in Utrecht, during the Minding Animals conference. First, here are some links:

* Nordic HAS Network: write to [Tora Holmberg] to join email list

* Dyreetikkonferansen (Oslo, September 21) (register here)

* The research seminar "Dyr, menneske og mat - dyreetikk i landbruket" (Oslo, September 22 - abstracts due 31/8)

* Nordic HAS portal (all suggestions welcome)

Most importantly, at the informal meeting in Utrecht we came up with the idea of initiating an annual, rotating Nordic Human-Animal Studies conference, perhaps starting in 2013. In order to facilitate the discussion about how this can be done, I have established a Google Group, "Nordic HAS conference". The group's email address is [...]. Inside Google Groups you can choose how often you want to receive emails. Questions for discussion include:

* Who are willing and able to organise the first conference, in 2013?

* How should choice of venue routinely be made? (cf. below)

* Do we need to organise a Nordic NGO, or a network of established national NGOs and networks?

* Is there so much interest in Dyreetikkonferansen and the associated research seminar event (see above) that we could hold a planning meeting in Oslo 21/9 or 22/9?

Feel free to pass this email on to others. The recipients of this initial email will be invited to join the Google Group, others can join as well.

My best,

Morten Tønnessen

Chair of Minding Animals Norway

Minding Animals Norway invites to Nordic Networking Session in Utrecht

Minding Animals Norway

Nordic Neighbours HAS session at the Minding Animals International Conference in Utrecht

Minding Animals Norway invites all of our Nordic neighbours with an interest in Human-Animal Studies to join us for an informal networking session. We would like to meet our neighbours – it’s good to know each other and learn what we are all doing! Please be welcome to join us at 13.00 – 14.00 Thursday 5th of July in room Ruppert 121 at the conference venue.

Velkommen!

Animals and philosophy roundtable scheduled

The Animals and philosophy roundtable (for which John Hadley is the convenor, and I am the scribe) at the upcoming Minding Animals conference in Utrecht, the Netherlands, has been scheduled for July 4th at 13.00-14.00. In the programme it is referred to as "Study circle discussion". It will take place in a room called Ruppert Rood.

See full programme for the Utrecht conference here.

See also: 

Minding Animals presentations scheduled for July 4th
MA2 scribe instructions received

Minding Animals presentations scheduled for July 4th

Both of my presentations at the second international Minding Animals conference have been scheduled for the first full conference day, Wednesday July 4th. 

"The contemporary symbolic construction of Norway's big bad wolf" has been scheduled for 14.00-15.30, partaking in the session "Public perception of animals II" (chaired by Jan van der Valk, room: Ruppert Blauw).

"Biosemiotics and animal ethics" has been scheduled for 16.00-17.30, partaking in the session "Animal ethics: New developments II" (no chair announced, room: Ruppert 040).

Each of these papers will be alloted 17 minutes for presentation and 5 minutes for questions from the audience and discussion, I've been informed.

See full programme for the Utrecht conference here.

MA2 scribe instructions received

A few days back I received the instructions for convenors and scribes of lunchtime roundtables at the second international Minding Animals conference, which is to take place in Utrect, the Netherlands, July 4-6. I am the scribe of the Animals and Philosophy roundtable, scheduled for July 4th. According to the memo, scribes will 1) collect a roll of participants/people present, 2) take a short set of minutes detailing decisions made, and 3) "assist the Convenor [in my case John Hadley] where necessary, particularly in coordinating the publication of the refereed academic paper in the ISEE [International Society for Environmental Ethics] Newsletter". Publications from the various roundtables are to appear 2012-2015.

See also:
Minding Animals Norway
Minding Animals International

Academic travels - June, July

Yesterday I arranged tickets and accommodation in relation to two academic travels this summer - to Imatra, Finland, June 8-13, where I will take part in the International Semiotics institute's Summer School (which includes the 25th year anniversary symposium of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies), and to Utrecht, the Netherlands, July 3-7th, where I will take part in the second Minding Animals Conference. The only thing that remains to arrange is my trip back home from Utrecht.

In between these two academic trips I will be on holyday with my wife and child-to-be in Brazil.

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".

***

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.

Abstract accepted for Minding Animals conference: "Biosemiotics and animal ethics"

Today i received a formal notification that my abstract "Biosemiotics and animal ethics" has been accepted for oral presentation at the second Minding Animals conference, which is to take place in Utrecht, the Netherlands, July 3-6.

***

BIOSEMIOTICS AND ANIMAL ETHICS

Morten Tønnessen

In «Meaning Matters: The Biosemiotic Basis of Bioethics» (Biosemiotics, published online October 15 2011), Jonathan Beever suggests that “Biosemiotics has the empirical potential to avoid transcendent explanations of morally relevant properties. Furthermore, it offers an account of the source and scope of value that is foundational to popular accounts such as those based on sentience.” This is because biosemiotics as a scientific discipline or approach interprets living systems as sign systems, and is focused on investigating the origin, emergence and development of meaning and of meaning-making at various levels of biological organization. A fundamental concept in biosemiotics is that of the Umwelt, introduced by the Baltic-German biologist Jakob von Uexküll (1864-1944) in 1909 and further developed through a series of works of his which are all of foundational significance for Biosemiotics, noteworthy Theoretical Biology (1920, 1928), A Stroll Through the Worlds of Animals and Men (1934) and Theory of Meaning (1940). According to conflicting contemporary interpretations, the Umwelt is either the experiential world (subjective world, phenomenal world) of animals at large, of animals with a nervous system (including or excluding humans), or of any living creature whatsoever. The Umwelt is often portrayed as species-specific, but I have argued that the term and model of the Umwelt can be applied from any level reaching from the individual organism via populations and species to possibly even higher taxa. I am further aiming to develop the Umwelt notion as applicable within the human realm by specifying it in various aspects, including by developing a tripartite model of the (human) Umwelt.

In this paper I will review Beever’s approach to biosemiotics as foundational for bioethics with a particular emphasis on animal ethics, and present developments of my own approach to the same topic. My approach was first presented in the 2003 article «Umwelt ethics» (Sign Systems Studies 31 (1): 281-299), which is in large measure an Uexküllian interpretation of the deep ecology platform – and one out of three early dealings with biosemiotics’ relevance for ethics treated by Beever in his recent article. In that article I stated that “[t]he reason why it makes sense to regard all semiotic agents […] as moral subjects, is that in respect to these entities, our actions make a difference. Only for semiotic agents can our actions ultimately appear as signs that influence their well-being. In capacity of meaning-utilizers, all semiotic agents, be it the simplest creature, are able to distinguish between what they need and what is irrelevant or harmful to them.” I further theorized: “But why regard higher-level bio-ontological entities as moral subjects? Because a living being is not an isolated incident. In a profound sense, a subject is what it relates to. The contrapuntal relations that it takes part in do, largely, define what being this subject is all about. The individual self branch[es] off into the society of phenomenal subjects and into the phenomenal world, it is already social, already worldly, already more-than-individual. You cannot really value a subject without at the same time valuing the web of contrapuntal relations that it takes part in.”

There is no consensus on the ontological and epistemological status of the Umwelt in the biosemiotic community, and even less so on ethical matters (which are essential to some and anathema to others). Nevertheless, the prospective of biosemiotics as foundational for animal ethics is well worth inquiring into. Though I might disagree with Beever on his apparent gradualism with regard to moral standing, I definitively see a common project in his quest for a biosemiotic ethic.

To be scribe for Animals and philosophy roundtable in Utrecht

I will be the scribe for the "Animals and philosophy" roundtable in Utrecht - one of 14 lunchtime roundtables arranged during the second international Minding Animals conference.

The roundtable is tied to an ongoing/permanent study circle, "Minding Animals and Philosophy", which currently has 44 registered members.

Australian philosopher John Hadley will be the convenor of this roundtable.

Minding Animals Bulletin no. 7

The seventh Bulletin of Minding Animals International was distributed the last few days. At 20 pages, it details a number of upcoming pre-conference lecture events, and more (such as a call for people to convene lunchtime roundtables at the Utrecht conference in 2012). It also envelops a wolf poster presented here in Utopian Realism advertising for the Oslo "Shared Worlds" event October 14-15, and a flyer for the Uppsala event October 17-18.

See also: Flyer for the Uppsala event "Zoo-ethnographies"

Minding Animals 2 CFP

The second Minding Animals conference, to be arranged in Utrecht, the Netherlands, will be arranged July 4-6, 2012 (there's also a Leusden Pre-conference Event at the International School of Philosophy July 1-3). Their Call For Papers is now open. Deadline for abstract submissions is October 2nd, 2011. Same deadline for suggestions for the Protecting the Animals Seminar Series.

Oslo MIA event mentioned in newsletter

Minding Animals International has issued its first newsletter before the 2012 Utrecht conference (MAC2 Newsletter 1). The Oslo Pre-lecture event is therein officially listed as one of the events taking place in October 2011, along with related events in New York, Rennes, Uppsala, London (twice), Christchurch, and Utrecht.

Update on the Minding Animals event in Oslo

Plans for the Oslo event in the Utrecht pre-conference lecture series of Minding Animals International is progressing. Today I talked by phone for the first time with Rhys Evans of the Equine Research Network and The Norwegian University College for Agriculture and Rural Development. The two are us are for now the only members of the organizing team. We are currently writing a memo with some initial decision points concerning the one-day event, which will take place Tuesday October 25th 2011 and involve plenary speeches, round table discussions (on human-horse and human-wolf relations) and group work. The overall theme for the event will be "shared worlds".

In the meantime, Minding Animals International has gone public with a list of cities where pre-conference events are being planned or considered.

Minding Animals International is proud to announce that several events are being planned before the next Minding Animals Conference.

Events are at various stages of development, and workshops, lectures, exhibitions or seminars in at least Abu Dhabi, Brisbane, Cape Town, Christchurch, Delhi, London (x2), New York, Oslo, Rennes, San Francisco, Sydney (x2), Wollongong, Uppsala and Utrecht, are now being considered.

The First Pre-conference Event is an expert meeting scheduled for Utrecht on 29 and 30 November, 2010, followed by a Second Event in Sydney on 3 December, 2010, a public lecture by Professor Marc Bekoff.