Abstract:Populist hunting movements have risen in recent years to safeguard rural interests against nature conservation.In extreme cases this movement has been accompanied by the illegal hunting of protected species. Using Sweden and Finland as a case study, the article elucidates how the perceived exclusion of hunters in the public debate on conservation mobilised this subculture toward resistance against regulatory agencies. Establishment of an alternative discursive platform comprising several ruralities -counterpublic in Negt and Kluge's original term -allowed hunters to publicise oppositional needs, interests and rationalities in the debate, and was a key juncture in their radicalisation trajectory. Finally the paper argues that failure to grant recognition to the counterpublic radicalised some individuals beyond counterpublic by engaging in illegal hunting. This practice is marked by the termination of political debate with society and represents a danger to political legitimacy.

This review explores the way that the illegal hunting phenomenon has been framed by research. We demarcate three main approaches that have been used to deconstruct the crime. These include 'drivers of the deviance', 'profiling perpetrators' and 'categorizing the crime'. Disciplinary silo thinking on the part of prominent theories, an overreliance on either a micro or a macro perspective, and adherence to either an instrumental or normative perspective are identified as weaknesses in existing approaches. Based on these limitations in addressing sociopolitical dimensions of the phenomenon, we call for a more integrative understanding that moves illegal hunting from being approached as a 'crime' or 'deviance' to being seen as a political phenomenon driven by the concepts of defiance and radicalization.

By animal-based tourism, a host of activities offering passive viewing or active interaction with wild, semi-wild or captive animals is included. The multibillion dollar industry is on the rise globally today, offering modes of engagement with animals that trade on increasingly embodied close encounters with non-human animals. As new modes of animal-based tourism proliferate, such as sloth selfies, visiting cat cafes, swimming with sharks and agri-tourism petting zoos, animal welfare standards risk deteriorating. In the following paper, we collate concerns over animal welfare into a discussion on the challenges facing animal-based tourism. Our synthesis is the first to consider the full spectrum of such animal-based tourism: across agri-, hunting, zoo and safari tourism, to name a few, and crossing consumptive and non-consumptive boundaries. A literature review is first provided. Findings are then presented thematically following workshops at an international interdisciplinary symposium of leading tourism, animal welfare, ethics and leisure sciences scholars together with practitioners of the industry. It discusses macrolevel drivers to animal-based tourism as an industry, the problem of cultural relativism and the role of technology in enhancing or promoting the experience. We indicate ways forward toward implementing a compassionate animal-based tourism.

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While calls for critical, engaged and change-oriented scholarship in environmental communication (EC) abound, few articles discuss what this may practically entail. With this article, we aim to contribute to a discussion in EC about the methodological implications of such scholarship. Based on our combined experience in EC research and drawing from a variety of academic fields, we describe six methodological dilemmas that we encounter in our research practice and that we believe are inherent to such scholarship. These dilemmas are (1) grasping communication; (2) representing others; (3) involving people in research; (4) co-producing knowledge; (5) engaging critically; and (6) relating to conflict. This article does not offer solutions to these complex dilemmas. Rather, our dilemma descriptions are meant to help researchers think through methodological issues in critical, engaged and change-oriented EC research. The article also helps to translate the dilemmas to the reality of research projects through a set of questions, aimed to support a sensitivity to, and understanding of, the dilemmas in context.