Two proposals for WCEH4 (Oulu, Finland, August 2024)

I have just submitted two proposals for the Fourth World Congress of Environmental History, to be held August 19-23rd in Oulu, Finland. 

For the panel "Animal Entanglements: new futures in multi-species pasts", I have proposed the abstract "The study of past Umwelten" based on my article by the same name.

Short abstract: I detail how past Umwelten can be studied by applying Jakob von Uexküll’s Umwelt theory and informed by contemporary science, and outline some basic assumptions in studies of past, current and future Umwelten. I also consider methodological issues related to the study of past Umwelten in particular.

Long abstract:

This presentation is based on a published article, "The study of past Umwelten" (Discipline Filosophische XXXIII(1), 2023, special issue “Jakob Von Uexküll. Biological Theory, Subjectivity And Environment”, ed. Vallori Rasini, pp. 227–247). In the article I detail how past Umwelten can be studied by applying Jakob von Uexküll’s Umwelt theory and informed by contemporary science. I argue that the methodological challenges raised by the lack of present organisms available for real-time observations and whole-body physiological studies can be partly overcome by making qualified assumptions drawn from relevant knowledge and reconstructing likely Umwelt relations. As groundwork for such studies, I outline some basic assumptions in studies of past, current and future Umwelten, consider methodological issues related to the study of past Umwelten in particular, and present a few empirical assumptions that are informative with regard to the study of past Umwelten in different historical periods. I also discuss the relevance of such studies for current conservation work, specifically contemporary discussions about de-extinction, and for economics conceived of as a branch of ecology in the fashion of ecological economics.

For the roundtable "The Human-Environmental Relationships in Critical Period of Crisis", I have proposed the abstract "Anticipating the societal transformation required to solve the environmental crisis in the 21st century" based on my article by the same name.

Short abstract: Two great challenges face humanity in the 21st century: solving an escalating environmental crisis, while also safeguarding and further improving human living conditions. I present an ecosemiotic framework for the study of societal transformations, enveloping socio-ecological developments.

Long abstract:

My contribution will be based on my published article "Anticipating the societal transformation required to solve the environmental crisis in the 21st century" (see https://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/sss/article/view/SSS.2021.49.1-2.02). Here I present a ecosemiotic perspective on socio-ecological developments historically and with a view to the future. Two great challenges face humanity in the 21st century: solving an escalating environmental crisis, while also safeguarding and further improving human living conditions. An ecosemiotic framework for the study of societal transformations is presented and political and other normative aspects of what I call transformative semiotics are discussed. This envelops socio-cultural and socio-ecological developments framed in terms of umwelt theory and Deep Ecology. In the long run, developments in human ecology as reflected in our changing relations to non-humans are expressed in the umwelt trajectory of humankind. The question of how the environmental crisis can best be solved is therefore tantamount to the question about what direction the human umwelt trajectory should take in this century. I outline different plausible umwelt scenarios for human ecology in the 21st century, focused on business-as-usual, ecomodernist and Deep Ecology scenarios. In a concluding discussion on technology and sustainability, the scenario development eventually includes a distinction between flexible and inflexible development paths.

My two contributions at The Fourth World Congress of Environmental History (WCEH4) scheduled in the conference program

While I do not have funding to attend The Fourth World Congress of Environmental History (WCEH4), “Transitions, transformations and transdisciplinarity: Histories beyond history”, to be held at University of Oulu, Finland August 19-23rd, physically, it turns out I can attend digitally. My two papers/presentations/participations have now been scheduled in the conference program. 

On Monday 19th of August, at 14:15-16:00, I will take part in the panel “Environmental biography as a methodological challenge” with my presentation "The study of past Umwelten".

On Friday 23rd of August I will take part in the roundtable “The Human-Environmental Relationships in Critical Period of Crisis” as a discussant, with my paper “Anticipating the societal transformation required to solve the environmental crisis in the 21st century”.

For my abstracts for these two conference papers, see:

Two proposals for WCEH4 (Oulu, Finland, August 2024)

Rountable discussion "The Human-Environmental Relationships in Critical Period of Crisis" at WCEH4 attended

Today I have taken part (digitally) in the roundtable "The Human-Environmental Relationships in Critical Period of Crisis", convened by Matteo Sartori & Julia Prakofjewa, on the last day of the 4th World Congress in Environmental History, which has been held in Oulu, Finland and online August 19-23rd. My brief introduction was related to my article “Anticipating the societal transformation required to solve the environmental crisis in the 21st century”; I also took part in the discussion. Some 10 people attended physically and online altogether.

Abstract for "(Un)Common Worlds III – Navigating and Inhabiting Biodiverse Anthropocenes": "A biosemiotic perspective on the environmental crisis"

I have submitted the abstract below to the organizers of the conference "(Un)Common Worlds III – Navigating and Inhabiting Biodiverse Anthropocenes" (University of Oulu and digitally, October 4-6th 2023).

***

A biosemiotic perspective on the environmental crisis 

Abstract 

Online presentation  

Morten Tønnessen 

***@uis.no  

Professor of philosophy, University of Stavanger, Norway   

ABSTRACT 

In this presentation I will present excerpts of the book chapter “A biosemiotic perspective on the human condition and the environmental crisis” (Tønnessen, forthcoming). The chapter presents a biosemiotic perspective on the basic situation for human beings and that of other organisms, with an emphasis on the subjective experience of sentient animals, and the sign use of all lifeforms. The human condition is portrayed as traditionally conceived, and then revisited in the new context of the current environmental crisis. In the political philosopher Hannah Arendt´s (1906–1975) book The Human Condition (Arendt 1958), she stresses that “[t]he earth is the very quintessence of the human condition”, and yet argues that “the “human artifice of the world separates human existence from all mere animal environment”. In her view, human reality is distinguished from the reality of any other living being on Earth, despite our shared ecological circumstances. A cornerstone of the chapter is an analysis of the materiality of the environmental crisis, and how the massive changes humans have caused in the physical environment can be understood in light of the semiotic agency of humans and animals. Experiential aspects of the environmental crisis are highlighted.   

REFERENCES 

Arendt, Hannah (1958). The Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 

Tønnessen, Morten, forthcoming. A biosemiotic perspective on the human condition and the environmental crisis. In Lenart Škof, Sashinungla, Sigridur Thorgeirsdottir (eds.), Elemental-Embodied Thinking for a New Era (Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures). Springer.

Paper scheduled for online presentation October 4th at "(Un)Common Worlds III – Navigating and Inhabiting Biodiverse Anthropocenes"

My paper “A biosemiotic perspective on the environmental crisis” has been scheduled for online presentation on Wednesday, October 4th at 4.00-4.30 PM as part of the session “Worldlings, onto-epistemologies, and becomings”, chaired by Anna Vladimirova, at the conference "(Un)Common Worlds III – Navigating and Inhabiting Biodiverse Anthropocenes", which is to be held October 4-6th at University of Oulu (Finland) and online.

See: Conference programme

Third semioethics interview approaching publication

I am right now in the process of proof-reading "The Semioethics Interviews III: John Deely: Human Understanding in the Age of Global Awareness", which will be published in the book Semiotics: Theory and applications.

Nova Publishers have now launched a site for the collection, which is edited by Steven C. Hamel, and included in the "Languages and Linguistics" series. The book, which will cost no less than 129$, is scheduled for publication in the 4th quarter of 2010. Below is Nova's book description and the table of contents (any emphasis is mine).

Book Description:
Semiotics is the study of sign processes (semiosis), or signification and communication, signs and symbols, and is usually divided into three branches: Semantics, Syntactics, and Pragmatics. Semiotics is frequently seen as having important anthropological dimensions. In general, semiotic theories take signs or sign systems as their object of study: the communication of information in living organisms is covered in biosemiotics or zoosemiosis. This book discusses the theory and application of semiotics across a broad spectrum and has gathered current research from around the globe.

Table of Contents:
Preface

Signifying the Transition from Modern to Post-Modern Schooling through Analyzing Changes in the Material Culture of Schools (Kostas Dimopoulos, Associate Professor of Learning Materials, Dept of Social and Educational Policy, University of Peloponnese, Greece)

Beyond Signification: The Co-Evolution of Subject and Semiosis (Tahir Wood, University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa)

Language, Emotion, and Health: A Semiotic Perspective on the Writing Cure (Louise Sundararajan, Chulmin Kim, Martina Reynolds, Chris R. Brewin, Rochester Regional Forensic Unit, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York, and others)

Re-Thinking the Place of Semiotics in Psychology and its Implications for Psychological Research (Agnes Petocz, University of Western Sydney)

How Israelis Represent the Problem of Violence in their Schools: A Case Study of a Discursive Construction (Douglas J. Glick, Department of Anthropology, Binghamton University, Binghamton, New York)

The Semioethics Interviews III: John Deely: Human Understanding in the Age of Global Awareness (Morten Tønnessen, Department of Semiotics, Institute of Philosophy and Semiotics, University of Tartu, Estonia, and others)

A Semiotics Discourse Analysis Framework: Understanding Meaning Making in Science Education Contexts (Kamini Jaipal-Jamani, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ont., Canada)

Semiotic Constraints of the Biological Organization (Abir U. Igamberdiev, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Department of Biology, St. John’s, NL, Canada)

Corpus-Based Approaches to Metaphor and Metonymy: Review of Stefanowitsch, Anatol, Gries, Stefan Th. (eds.) (Zhiying Xin, School of Foreign Languages, Sun Yat-sen University, P. R. China)

The Role of Sign Vehicles in Mediating Teachers’ Mathematical Problem Solving (Sinikka Kaartinen, Timo Latomaa, University of Oulu, Finland)

Interaction and Interactivity: A Semiotic Commentary (Jan M. Broekman, Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law, Penn State University Dickinson School of Law, Pennsylvania)

Multimodal Stylistics: The Happy Marriage of Stylistics and Semiotics (Nina Nørgaard, Institute of Language and Communication, University of Southern Denmark)

“The study of past Umwelten” transfer candidate for Fourth World Congress of Environmental History

I have been notified that my paper “The study of past Umwelten” has been considered as a transfer paper for the Fourth World Congress of Environmental History, “Transitions, transformations and transdisciplinarity: Histories beyond history”, to be held at University of Oulu, Finland 19th-23rd of August 2024. I have now selected three possibly relevant panels for transfer, and slighly revised the conference abstract, in three different versions.

See also:

Environmental crisis paper to be presented at Fourth World Congress of Environmental History

Environmental crisis paper to be presented at Fourth World Congress of Environmental History

I have been notofied that my paper “Anticipating the societal transformation required to solve the environmental crisis in the 21st century” has been accepted for presentation at the Fourth World Congress of Environmental History, “Transitions, transformations and transdisciplinarity: Histories beyond history”, to be held at University of Oulu, Finland 19th-23rd of August 2024, as part of the roundtable “The Human-Environmental Relationships in Critical Period of Crisis”.

Presentation "The study of past Umwelten" to be given at 4th World Congress of Environmental History

My paper "The study of past Umwelten" has been accepted for presentation at the 4th World Congress of Environmental History, to be held in Oulu, Finland August 19-23rd 2024, as part of the panel “Environmental biography as a methodological challenge”.

"The study of past Umwelten" presented digitally at Fourth World Congress of Environmental History (WCEH4)

Today I have presented my paper "The study of past Umwelten" at The Fourth World Congress of Environmental History (WCEH4), held August 19-23rd at University of Oulu, Finland and online with the theme “Transitions, transformations and transdisciplinarity: Histories beyond history”, specifically in session 2 of the panel “Environmental biography as a methodological challenge”. About 15 people attended altogether.

See also: 

Discipline Filosophiche special issue on Uexküll now published, with "The study of past Umwelten"

Full article in UIS Brage

Paper "A biosemiotic perspective on the environmental crisis" presented at "(Un)Common Worlds III" conference

Today I have presented my paper “A biosemiotic perspective on the environmental crisis" digitally at the conference "(Un)Common Worlds III – Navigating and Inhabiting Biodiverse Anthropocenes", which is organised at the University of Oulu (Finland) in collaboration with the University of Derby (UK) October 4–6th. Some 20 people attended on-site and online altogether. My presentation was given in the session “Worldlings, onto-epistemologies, and becomings”, chaired by Anna Vladimirova. The session also involved presentations by Wenrui Li and Ombre Tarragnat.

The Semiotics of Animal Representations: Rodopi confirms

Upon arrival in Sydney I received the message that the series editors of Rodopi's Nature, Culture and Literature (Hubert van den Berg (Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznan), Axel Goodbody (University of Bath) and Marcel Wissenburg (Radboud University Nijmegen)) have accepted our book proposal The Semiotics of Animal Representations (edited by Kadri Tüür and myself) for inclusion in the book series.

We have written to the contributors that "[i]n order to facilitate the cohesion and intertextuality of the book, we would like to propose that all contributors in addition [to full-length papers, due May 31st] send us a draft of their papers (including reference list) by March 25th." These will be distributed to the other contributors.

Below is the content list of the book.

Table of contents

1. Kadri Tüür (University of Tartu – Estonia) and Morten Tønnessen (University of Tartu – Estonia)

Introduction

2. Wendy Wheeler (London Metropolitan University – UK)

Captivation and ecstasy: Animal immersion and human enchantment

3. Onno Oerlemans (Hamilton College – USA)

The semiotics of bird poems

4. W. John Coletta (University of Wisconsin—Stevens Point – USA)

Evolutionary bodies of knowledge; Or, the evolutionary phenomenology of J. J. Audubon, Georges Bataille, Theodore Roethke, and Octavia Butler

5. Louise Westling (University of Oregon – USA)

The zoosemiotics of sheep herding with dogs

6. Maki Eguchi (University of Tsukuba – Japan)

Representation of sheep in modern Japanese literature: From Natsume Sōseki to Murakami Haruki

7. Adam Dodd (University of Oslo – Norway)

Entomological rhetoric and the fabrication of the insect world

8. Kadri Tüür (University of Tartu – Estonia)

Like a fish out of water: Literary representations of fish

9. Sandra Grötsch (University of Oulu – Finland)

Animal representation and attitudes of humans toward non-humans in fantasy literature

10. Taija Kaarlenkaski (University of Eastern Finland – Finland)

Communicating with the cow: Human-animal interaction in written narratives

11. Christos Lynteris (University of St. Andrews – UK)

Speaking marmots, deaf hunters: Animal-human semiotic breakdown as the cause of the Manchurian pneumonic plague of 1910-11

12. Graham Huggan (University of Leeds – UK)

Attenborough, colonialism and the British tradition of nature documentary

13. Larissa Budde (University of Siegen – Germany)

The semiotics of insects and the hive in popular culture

14. David Rothenberg (New Jersey Institute of Technology – USA)

Animal music, animal aesthetics

15. Ralph R. Acampora (Hofstra University – USA)

The (proto-)ethical significance of semiosis: When and how does one become somebody who matters?

Index

References

UIS The Greenhouse presentations at the Fourth World Congress of Environmental History (WCEH4)

Here is an overview of presentations and events incvolving scholars from The Greenhouse - Center for Environmental Humanities at the Fourth World Congress of Environmental History (WCEH4), held August 19-23rd at University of Oulu, Finland and online with the theme “Transitions, transformations and transdisciplinarity: Histories beyond history”.

Paper "A biosemiotic perspective on the environmental crisis" accepted for presentation at (Un)Common Worlds III conference

I have been notified by the conference organizers that my paper "A biosemiotic perspective on the environmental crisis" has been accepted for presentation at the conference (Un)Common Worlds III Human-Animal Studies Conference (to be held at University of Oulu, University and Derby and online October 4-6th).