Umwelt Transitions: Uexküll and Environmental Change

Tønnessen, Morten

doi:10.1007/s12304-008-9036-y

Cited by 61 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 27 publications

(4 reference statements)

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“…Th e relationship between predator and prey might not appear to most people as an instance of "a harmonious relationship" (for a critique of Uexküll's outdated view on the balance of nature, see Tønnessen 2009a). However, when Uexküll calls predator-prey relationships "harmonious", his point is that from an ecological point of view, predator-prey relationships do contribute to maintaining ecological balance between diff erent species, and even to the soundness of prey species (see below).…”

Section: The Managed Umwelten Of Large Predators In the Wildmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Of particular relevance here is the modelling of changes in relations. An umwelt transition (Tønnessen 2009a) is defi ned as "a lasting, systematic change, within the life cycle of a being, considered from an ontogenetic (individual), phylogenetic (population-, species-) or cultural perspective, from one typical appearance of its Umwelt to another" (ibid., p. 49; cf. chapter 2 in this volume).…”

Section: Case Study: Wolves 14mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Animal Umwelten in a Changing world: Zoosemiotic Perspectives

Mäekivi¹,

Oma²,

Tønnessen³

et al. 2016

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Animals are. A multitude of diff erent species surrounds us in our everyday doings, and infl uences our behaviour and culture. Dogs and cats develop delicate and personal relationships with the families they belong to. Swans and geese are waiting to be fed by passers-by. Th e wing-strokes of doves and jackdaws give a subtle ephemeral atmosphere to our cities. Spiders, snails and snakes are met with surprise or disgust. Beavers are blamed for reshaping the landscapes, and wolves for killing livestock. People and animals engage and interact in a number of ways: from hunting and fi shing to bird-watching, from the help provided by assistance dogs to family holidays in zoological gardens and animal parks. Children's fi rst encounters with the written word oft en take place through animal stories. And many fi ctional animal characters are known and internationally celebrated by name: Lassie, Moby Dick, Bambi, King Kong, etc. None of these interactions would be possible without semiotic processes: perception, communication and interpretation occurring between humans and animals. Sign relations or mediated relations that connect humans with other animal species are the very subject of this collective monograph. We make an inquiry into the semiotic character of diff erent species, study the ways in which humans endow animals with meaning, and analyse how animal sign exchange and communication has coped with environmental change. In this research, our core disciplinary framework is zoosemiotics, the semiotic study of animals-the paradigm that was proposed by the eminent American-Hungarian semiotician Th omas A. Sebeok in the 1960s and that recently had its fi ft ieth anniversary. Our approach is essentially semiotic and biosemiotic. At the same time, we engage in dialogues with ecocriticism, Actor-Network Th eory, posthumanism and other contemporary schools of the humanities, as well as with more practically oriented research topics in visitor studies, animal welfare studies and humananimal studies, not to forget ethology and conservation biology. Th is book is a collective eff ort. Its authors belong to the research group in zoosemiotics and human-animal relations based in the Department of Semiotics at the University of Tartu in Estonia, and at the University of Stavanger in Norway. Th e two opening chapters are written and edited collectively and present a framework of philosophical, historical, epistemological and methodological matters of zoosemiotic research. Th ese initial considerations are followed by specifi c case studies that have been conducted by individual authors. Th e specifi c chapters, however, have been cross-edited and commented on by other TIMO MARAN ET AL

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Section: The Managed Umwelten Of Large Predators In the Wildmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Case Study: Wolves 14mentioning

confidence: 99%

Animal Umwelten in a Changing world: Zoosemiotic Perspectives

Mäekivi¹,

Oma²,

Tønnessen³

et al. 2016

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“…In our time of rapid environmental change, neglecting the historical dimension of the life processes is both counterintuitive and counterproductive. I have criticised the ahistoricity of the Umwelt theory and introduced the concept of 'Umwelt transitions', a Uexküllian notion of environmental change, elsewhere (Tønnessen 2009). What is needed is an interdisciplinary methodology capable in principle (if not in practice) of taking in the whole width of empirical findings.…”

Section: Qualities and Quantitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The 'ontological niche' (Tønnessen 2009), a notion derived from von Uexküll's Umwelt concept, can be defined as the set (or whole) of ecological relations (or contrapuntal relations, be they somatic, social, or ecological) a being or life form partakes in at a certain point in natural history. Figuratively, ontological niches would best be represented not as separate slices, but rather as overlapping phenomenal fields where the phenomenal field of any one being overlaps with the fields of all other beings and other Umwelt objects with whom and with which it is interacting.…”

Section: Ecological Footprint and Ontological Nichementioning

confidence: 99%

The Space of Culture – the Place of Nature in Estonia and Beyond

Peil¹

2011

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Aims & ScopeThe Approaches to Culture Theory book series focuses on various aspects of analysis, modelling, and theoretical understanding of culture. Culture theory as a set of complementary theories is seen to include and combine the approaches of different sciences, among them semiotics of culture, archaeology, environmental history, ethnology, cultural ecology, cultural and social anthropology, human geography, sociology and the psychology of culture, folklore, media and communication studies. 978-9949-19-623-4 Approaches to Culture Theory Foreword by the Series EditorsThe motivation in initiating this book series is to provide a forum for discussion on the contemporary culture theory as approached by a variety of disciplines. The core group includes archaeology, human geography, ethnology, social anthropology, communication and contemporary culture, folklore, religion studies, and semiotics. This list is not exclusive for other branches in humanities or social sciences studying culture. Yet, in 2008 the research teams in these disciplines in Estonia established the Centre of Excellence in Cultural Theory (CECT) with support from the European Union. The CECT focuses its research on the inheritance and creativity of cultural practices from ancient times to the present. Research groups cooperate to find new, and combine established, approaches and themes -ancient social and cultural systems, folklore and heritage, contemporary everyday practice, the evolution and translatability of sign systems, landscape and sociological processes, media and life story research -in order to advance theoretical analysis of culture.Culture theory has a great role to play, not only as a set of theories in the humanities and social sciences, but also as a self-description of culture that forms a factor in the dynamics of culture and science. The series thus also aims to enhance methodological and theoretical standards in cultural research. We strive towards significant improvement in both the selfunderstanding of disciplinary fields and in the comprehension of general theoretical models by juxtaposing and comparing data, theories, and the methods of research in an interdisciplinary environment through crossdisciplinary cooperation. The editors intend this book series to facilitate the publication of significant results in the field of culture studies from around the globe. Constructing NatureThe Positioning on the Landscape of Culture and Mind: Methods for the Social Construction of Nature 78 Maaris RaudseppMapping Human Impact -Expanding Horizons: Interdisciplinary Integration 93 Morten TønnessenWriting the Environment: Finnish Written Nature Narratives 107 Kirsi Laurén Landscapes and Environmental Change 10 AcknowledgementsFirst of all thanks are directed to the participants who found time to attend the event, to the contributors to this book for their patience and enjoyable cooperation and to colleagues, especially Helen Sooväli-Sepping (and the Sepping family of Wiina farm) and Monika Tasa for their practical help throug...

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“…Tønnessen 2003: 287-290 andTønnessen 2009a in particular. In the latter, I set out to historize the Umwelt notion by introducing a concept of transitional Umwelten.…”

Section: Umwelt Terminologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Steps to a Semiotics of Being

Tønnessen

2010

Biosemiotics

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The following points, which represent a path to a semiotics of being, are pertinent to various sub-fields at the conjunction of semiotics of nature (biosemiotics, ecosemiotics, zoosemiotics) and semiotics of culture-semioethics and existential semiotics included. 1) Semiotics of being entails inquiry at all levels of biological organization, albeit, wherever there are individuals, with emphasis on the living qua individuals (integrated biological individualism). 2) An Umwelt is the public aspect (cf. the Innenwelt, the private aspect) of a phenomenal/experienced world that is organism-specific (rather than species-specific) and ultimately refers to an existential realm. 3) Existential universals at work on Earth include seeking out the edible, dwelling in a medium, holding a phenomenal world (possibly an Umwelt) and being endowed with life, and consequently being mortal. 4) Human Umwelten include speechless Umwelten, spoken Umwelten and alphabetic Umwelten. 5) An Uexküllian phenomenology-stating that semiotic states represent the general class to which all mental/cognitive states belong-can draw on the works of the phenomenologists David Abram and Ted Toadvine (The notion of semiotic states is treated in Tønnessen 2009a: 62-63. For an introduction to eco-phenomenology, see Brown and Toadvine (eds.) 2003). 6) A task for such a phenomenology is to portray the natural history of the phenomenal world. 7) An imperative task in our contemporary world of faltering biological diversity is that of Umwelt mapping, i.e. a mapping of ontological niches. 8) The ecological crisis is an ontological crisis with historical roots in humankind's domestication of animals and plants, which can be taken as archetypical for our attempted planet-scale taming of the wild. 9) The process of globalization is expressed by correlated trends of depletion of semiotic diversity and semiotic

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Umwelt Transitions: Uexküll and Environmental Change

Cited by 61 publications

References 27 publications

Animal Umwelten in a Changing world: Zoosemiotic Perspectives

Animal Umwelten in a Changing world: Zoosemiotic Perspectives

The Space of Culture – the Place of Nature in Estonia and Beyond

Steps to a Semiotics of Being

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