Tiger King chronicle published

My chronicle ""Tiger King" Joe Exotic: En ekte dyrevenn?" ("Tiger King" Joe Exotic: A genuine animal advocate?) is published in the national Norwegian daily Vårt Land today, both in print and online.

Chronicle on Tiger King Netflix series to appear in Vårt Land

Yesterday I finished a chronicle, titled ""Tiger King" Joe Exotic: En ekte dyrevenn?" ("Tiger King" Joe Exotic: A genuine animal advocate?). Today I was told it will appear in the daily Vårt Land (which invited it) in a couple of days.

Autumn´s first article writing day

Today I have had this autumn´s first article writing day, with some 1000 words written on my article "Current human ecology in light of Umwelt theory: Human-animal interaction in Amazonas and beyond".

UiS workshop on ERC grants attended; preliminary ERC project title

Today I have attended a half-day workshop on applying for ERC grants organized by the program area for research "The Greenhouse" with assistance from the University of Stavanger research and innovation unit.

The preliminary title for my ERC Consolidator Grant application is "Assessing human and animal wellbeing in the Anthropocene".

Report from GroupHouseNet stakeholder workshop

Here is a brief report from the stakeholder workshop I co-organised in Skopje, Macedonia, in early June as part of the COST action GroupHouseNet.

Interview on wolves in Fædrelandsvennen weekly magazine

Saturday July 30th, an interview with me on people´s ideas about wolves featured in a long story (7 pp. including other interviews) on wolves published in the weekend magazine of Norwegian regional daily newspaper Fædrelandsvennen.

"Umwelt transitions" paper cited in Kiiroja MA

My article

Tønnessen, M. 2009. Umwelt transitions: Uexküll and environmental change. Biosemiotics 2(1): 47–64.

is referred to in

Kiiroja, Laura 2014. The zoosemiotics of socialization: Case-study in socializing red fox (Vulpes vulpes) in Tangen Animal Park, Norway. Master thesis. Tartu: University of Tartu. Available online: http://dspace.ut.ee/handle/10062/43977.

Excerpts:

"Umwelt theory which, in this thesis, is predominantly based on the works of Jakob von Uexküll and Morten Tønnessen." [p. 6] 

"While Uexküll claimed the most important functional circles in most animals’ Umwelts to be the circles of physical medium (i.e. the surrounding environment), food, enemy, and sex (Uexküll 1982: 67), it might be more adequate to adjust those circles as physical medium, food, enemy and partner (Tønnessen 2009: 54). This adjustment is important when considering the various kinds of social relationships besides the reproductive ones, that function as partnerships in the animal’s Umwelt. At least in a zoo environment, these other kinds of partnership obtain a comparable value for the animal as the relationship with a potential breeding partner has.

Perhaps, the importance of Umwelt apprehension in the zoo animals is most adequately described by Norwegian philosopher and biosemiotician Morten Tønnessen. Tønnessen has brought out the concept of ontological niche, being inspired by Danish biosemiotician Jesper Hoffmeyer’s theory of semiotic niche. While Hoffmeyer’s semiotic niche involves all the interpretive challenges offered for the animal by its ecological niche (Hoffmeyer 2008: 13), then Tønnessen’s ontological niche involves the set of the animal’s active relationships at the current moment of the history of nature (Tønnessen 2009: 54). The ontological niche, therefore, determines the area in the phenomenal world occupied by the animal. Here, Tønnessen has depicted the ontological niche as phenomenal fields, where one animal’s phenomenal fields overlap with those of the other animals with whom it is in interaction. (Tønnessen 2009: 54) Such ontological map sufficiently describes the possibilities of human-animal relationships (as well as animal-animal relationships). For facilitative reasons, it must be realized that in order to establish positive human-animal relationships, man has to “move” from the enemy phenomenal field (functional circle) of the animal to the partner phenomenal field (functional circle). It seems to the author that such Umwelt reconstruction is not as simple, but includes transition-phases of “rather negative significane”, “neutral significance”, “rather positive significance” of people, before people in general obtain a meaning-carrier of a partner in the animal’s Umwelt. To make it even more complicated, it so happens that some people, who have a strong positive relationship with the animal, are considered as partners, where unfamiliar people could still, by default, carry a meaning of an enemy. The importance of Umwelt reconstruction (with a goal to change the meaning-carrier of people in general) is crucial for captive animal welfare, and, in the opinion of the author, should be consciously aimed in zoos, where different human-animal encounters are inevitable. Socialization is the part of animal welfare programme, which predominantly solves this problem." [p. 25-26] 

"Only in means of positive experience is it possible to move man’s meaning-carrier from the phenomenal field (or functional circle) of enemy to the phenomenal field of partner in the animal’s Umwelt (Tønnessen 2009: 54)." [p. 68]

Wolf socialization article renamed

My article-in-progress with Laura Kiiroja "Socialization of wolves" is tentatively retitled "Socialization of captive wolves facilitates animal welfare and behavior".

Opinion piece on mother-child relations in animals published in Salongen

My opinion piece "Jakten på mor og barn" [The hunt for/Hunting mother and child] was published in Salongen December 2nd, upon invitation, in relation to the 4th Norwegian Animal Ethics Conference.

Salongen is a webpage, or online journal, for philosophy and the history of ideas.

Zoosemiotics methodology chapter revised

Ive just revised a central part of my contribution to the chapter "Methodology of zoosemiotics: concepts, categorizations, models", written with with Timo Maran, Kadri Tüür, Riin Magnus, Silver Rattasepp and Nelly Mäekivi and forthcoming in Animal Umwelts in a changing world – Semiotic studies of human-animal relations. Specifically, I have rearranged the section "Elaborating umwelt theory", which sums up my work on developing Jakob von Uexküll´s Umwelt theory further. I´ve also made some minor edits in the chapter generally.

Large predators chapter completed

In the night between December 25th and 26th I completed the chapter «The semiotics of predation and the Umwelten of large predators" (previously titled "The Semiotics of Wild Carnivore Management"), for the collective monograph Animal Umwelts in a Changing World: Semiotic Studies of human-animal relations (forthcoming, Tartu University Press).

New book title for collective monograph

The collective monograph so far work-titled Semiotic methods in the study of human-animal interactions (forthcoming, Tartu University Press - see previous posts) has been renamed Animal Umwelts in a changing world - Semiotic studies of human-animal relations.

Abstract (Vargsymposiet 2016): "Marked for life – Ethical questions concerning management of and research on wolves"

The Norwegian title of my upcoming presentation at Vargsymposiet 2016 is "Merket for livet – Etiske spørsmål knyttet til forvaltning av og forskning på ulv". The English version of the abstract, finished yesterday, follows below.

Marked for life – Ethical questions concerning management of and research on wolves

Morten Tønnessen (academic blog: Utopian Realism)

Associate professor of philosophy, University of Stavanger

This presentation vil address ethical questions concerning how we treat the wolf. It will hopefully be of relevance for similar discussions about bears, wolverines and lynx as well. To study how we treat the wolf, we must first make a distinction between formal and informal wolf management. By ”formal wolf management”, I mean the official management, for which the authorities are responsible. ”Informal wolf management”, on the other side, refers to the public´s treatment of the wolf, whether it is of legal or illegal character (including illegal hunting).

Such conceptual distinctions make a difference, because our motivation for how we treat the wolf, according to many ethicists, can be seen as decisive for how our actions may be judged. This is a central theme within ethics of conviction. In this presentation I will therefor compare legal and illegal hunting, as well as authority-approved ”taking out” (“removal”) of individual wolves, based on two different ethical perspectives: a consequentialist perspective, where what is decisive is what consequences our actions have for the wolf. And an ethics of conviction perspective, where the motivation behind our actions is emphasised.

In this context, I will also use radio-collared wolves as a central example. In this case as well I will interpret current practices from a consequentialist and ethics of conviction perspective respectively. Here the relevant distinction to be made is not that between formal and informal wolf management, but a distinction between research purposes and management purposes. In what way is the researcher´s motivation different from the manager´s motivation for tagging a wolf and equipping it with a radio-collar? And to what extent can our need for knowledge justify such treatment of wolves? Seen from a consequentialist perspective, with an emphasis on the consequences for the wolves involved, it remains clear that GPS-tagging of wolves, possibly with the use of a helicopter during the chase when tagging is done and at later capture events, can involve a risk of traumas for the marked wolf. An important question is whether such traumas permanently changes the wolf´s relation to humans, and what this does to the wolf (and to the reliability of research data).

A measure of our formal management of wolves is to what extent our attempts to protect the wolf as a species, or population, is based on a willingness to sacrifice individual wolves. A sound wolf ethics must, in my opinion, presuppose that our treatment of wolves is compatible with attributing moral status to the wolf both on a species level and on an individual level. Here, further ethical traditions can be made use of. From a virtue-ethical perspective, our management of wolves should seek to realize good lives for humans as well as for wolves and animals in our care. From a deontological perspective, one often makes reference to the inherent value of living beings. If the wolf, too, has inherent value, then we have a duty to respect its inviolability, on a par with the inviolability of other living beings with inherent value.  

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).

Father again; not attending "my" conference

Despite being the chair of the Local organising committee, I am not attending the conference "Animals in the Anthropocene: Human–animal relations in a changing semiosphere", since I became a father (again) two days ago.

Four chapters edited for zoosemiotic HAS book

By July 21st I edited/gave feedback on four chapters for the collective monograph Semiotic Methods in the Study of Human-Animal Interactions, which is to appear next Spring.

"Umwelt codes exemplified by Umwelt alignment in corvids" presented in Jena

Today I have presented the paper "Umwelt codes exemplified by Umwelt alignment in corvids" at the 2nd International Conference in Code Biology. Some 35 people were present.

See also Almo Farina´s introduction to ecological codes.

Two Umwelt theory articles cited in Maran´s "Emergence of the “Howling Foxes”"

My articles

Tønnessen, M. (2009). Umwelt transitions: Uexküll and environmental change. Biosemiotics, 2(1), 47–64.

Tønnessen, M. (2014). Umwelt trajectories. Semiotica, 198, 159–180.

are cited in

Timo Maran 2015. Emergence of the “Howling Foxes”: A Semiotic Analysis of Initial Interpretations of the Golden Jackal (Canis aureus) in Estonia. Biosemiotics. Published online June 3rd 2015 (DOI 10.1007/s12304-015-9244-1).

Excerpt:

There are some semiotic studies that could be used as a point of departure for a semiotic analysis of non-native or invasive species. [...] Morten Tønnessen (2009; 2014) has developed Uexküll’s Umwelt theory towards a research method for analyzing phenomenological and semiotic aspects of changing human-animal relations (e.g. between man and wolf).

Fish welfare chronicle linked to in new Aftenposten chronicle

The chronicle "Fiskelykke?" [fish happiness?], written by Tore Kristiansen and me and published in Aftenposten August 2014, is linked to as relevant reading in relation to the online publication of Siri Martinsen´s chronicle in Aftenposten "Fisken - det usynlige dyret" [the fish - the invisible animal], published June 6th.

"A critical reading of the mentions of animals in Norwegian political party programs" written

This night I finished my chapter "A critical reading of the mentions of animals in Norwegian political party programs" (see previous posts). In this study I make use of ecolinguistics, corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis.

Two consultative statements on Norwegian fur industry

Last week I composed and submitted two consultative statements to the Norwegian Ministry of Agriculture on whether or not the Norwegian fur industry should be terminated, one on behalf of Minding Animals Norway and the other on behalf of myself as Associate professor of philosophy at University of Stavanger. All consultative statements submitted - around 80 - are to be found here.

My statement as a private person is available here. The statement of Minding Animals Norway is available here.