The European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture, and the Environment (EASLCE) Biennial Conference Nordic Network for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies (NIES) IX Conference Hosted by the Department of Semiotics at the University of Tartu FRAMING NATURE: SIGNS, STORIES, AND ECOLOGIES OF MEANING ABSTRACTS April 29–MAY 3, 2014 TARTU, ESTONIA ORGANISERS European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture, and the Environment (EASLCE) Nordic Network for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies (NIES) HOST Department of Semiotics at the University of Tartu COOPERATIVES Department of Literature and Theatre Research at the University of Tartu, Estonian Semiotics Association Centre for Environmental History (KAJAK) SUPPORTERS European Union European Regional Development Fund (CECT, EU/Estonia) Institute of Philosophy and Semiotics at the University of Tartu Norway Financial Mechanism 2009-2014 (project contract no EMP151) The Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (RCC) European Society for Environmental History Gambling Tax Council ADVISORY BOARD Hannes Bergthaller Maunu Häyrynen Serenella Iovino Ulrike Plath Timo Maran ORGANISING TEAM Timo Maran Nelly Mäekivi Kadri Tüür Silver Rattasepp Riin Magnus EDITING Silver Rattasepp COVER DESIGN Pärt Ojamaa, Katre Pärn LAYOUT DESIGN Mehmet Emir Uslu PRINT University of Tartu Press ISBN 978-9949-32-570-2 (PDF) CONTENTS PLENARY LECTURES W. WHEELER E. W. B. HESS-LÜTTICH S. HARTMAN & T. MCGOVERN PRESENTATIONS W. ABBERLEY D. JørgeNSeN u. plAth A. BEARDSWORTH K. KacZMARCZYK, M. SaLVONI R. POTTER B. AĞIN DÖNmez Y. K. KAISINger J. prIeBe F. AYKANat W. KALAGA S. RattaSEPP J. BEEVER D. Kass Y. reDDIcK F. BELLARSI R. KERRIDGE T. REMM T. BENNETT m. KleStIl m. reYNolDS H. BERGTHALLER A. KNEITZ R. ROORda W. BIgell K. KONSA K. SaLT D. BORTHWICK P. KOPecKÝ T. SaLUMETS S. BouttIer F. KRAUSE m. SAlVoNI M. CARRETERO-GONZÁLEZ A. MARZecOva & M. KRIVY I. SaNZ ALONSO M. CaSTELLANOS K. KULL c. SchlIephAKe S. CETTIE & G. WINKEL R. KÕIV N. SEYMOUR Y. CHANG U. KÜCHLER l. SquIre M. CLEMENTS S. LaaKKONEN & O. TÄHKÄPÄÄ K. St. OURS A. CUTLER J. LajUS H. STRaSS S. DIETRICH K. LINDSTRÖM I. SUKHENKO M. EGAN K. LUMMAA h. Sullivan R. EMMETT S. Machat M. SÕRMUS S. C. ESTOK R. MagNUS r. SõuKAND & r. KAlle S. GaNZ T. MARAN E. SÜTISTE F. gINN p. mArlAND J. TaLVET A. GOODBODY I. MARTÍN-JUNQUERA P. J. THIBAULT M. GRAHAM J. m. mArrero heNríquez m. tøNNesseN C. GREWE-VOLPP S. MAYER R. CHEN-HSING TSAI J. J. grIFFIth A. MEHNERT H. TSANG M. GRIMBEEK B. MELTS K. TÜÜR o. heINApuu A. merIlAI L. UNT Y. H. HENDLIN K. MIchta I. VALERO r. heNNIg A. mIhKeleV A. WeIK VoN mossner I. HOVING P. MORTENSEN H. WHALE V. hreinssoN N. mäeKIVI D. VIllANueva romero D. INGRAM J. I. OLIva-CRUZ R. WILLIAMS S. IoVINo S. oppermANN p. VIrtANeN T. IRELAND C. OScaRSON C. H. VOIE m. A. Izor J. ParhAm K. c. YAzgüNoĞlu P. JANSEN, J. V. D. StOEP, P.- L. PatOINE, J. HOPE H. YILMAZ H. JOCHEMSEN K. PauKNeroVá, m. StellA z. g. YIlmAz M. I. PÉREZ-RAMOS 4 FRAMING NATURE S LECTURE LENARY LENARY P PLENARY LECTURES 5 THE CARRYING: MATERIAL FRAMES AND IMMATERIAL MEANINGS WENDY WHEELER London Metropolitan University, United Kingdom From an ecological and biosemiotic point of view, the idea of a frame applies both to the framing effects of natural and cultural contexts and also to the frame as formal cause: the mind, skeleton and muscula- ture with which any organism acts back on its environment is, at the same time, and as Gregory Bateson and Jesper Hoffmeyer have both pointed out, an embodied historical story of that mutual poiesis. This is both a material and a semiotic process. In a, by now, rather famous little passage from a 1997 New York Review of Books review essay of Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, biologist Richard Lewontin wrote that ‘it is not that the meth- ods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a mate- rial explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mys- tifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door’. The assumption – a prod- uct of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and in fact counter to all our ordinary experience – is that the fact of material causation must exclude non-material causes altogether. But not only do words and symbolic meanings, mere material no-things, have performative power, they can also boost our health and self esteem or break our 6 FRAMING NATURE hearts. Beyond these well-researched and attested facts, meanings and knowledges grow like organic life does. Our relation to narrative is clothed in this enormous immaterial material power. In this paper I will discuss what I call ‘the carrying’: the dependence upon material bearers of a non-material causative power some of the most exempla- ry powers of which are to be found in the work of art. PLENARY LECTURES 7 TIME AND SPACE IN URBAN PLANNING: COMMUNICATIVE INFRASTRUCTURE OF IMPLEMENTING NEW CONCEPTS OF MOBILITY AND ENERGY IN THE CITY ERNEST W. B. HESS-LÜTTICH University of Bern, Switzerland Sustainable urban planning is understood as a communicative process which reflects the concepts of time and space in the sectors of archi- tecture, technology, and social structure in order to improve mobility systems and energy supply. Therefore, semioticians may contribute to the empirical investigation of discourse processes which brings to- gether citizens, planners, architects, administrators, politicians. The focus on sustainability implies not only considering effectiveness in the dimensions of time and space, but also decisions on the preser- vation of cultural heritage. The modelling of socio-cultural sign pro- cesses involved in this highly specialized and yet transdisciplinary dis- course asks for the expertise of semioticians linking the intermediary fields of urban discourse, sociology, and ecology. The paper attempts to illustrate this modelling with an exemplary look at current projects of this kind (Basel, IBA Hamburg and Berlin) in order to better un- derstand which communicative maxims may improve the mediation between diverse interests of the communicators involved in this dis- course – for a better living and an effective time management in urban space, including the historical, technical, and sociocultural/inter-cul- tural implications of its semiosis. 8 FRAMING NATURE INTEGRATING HUMANITIES SCHOLARSHIP WITHIN THE SCIENCE OF GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE: THE EXAMPLE OF INSCRIBING ENVIRONMENTAL MEMORY IN THE ICELANDIC SAGAS (IEM), AN IHOPE CASE STUDY SteveN HARTMAN Mid Sweden University, Sweden THOMAS MCGOVERN City University of New York, USA IEM is a major interdisciplinary research initiative examining envi- ronmental memory in the medieval Icelandic sagas. The initiative brings together teams of historians, literary scholars, archaeologists and geographers, as well as specialists in environmental sciences and medieval studies, to investigate long-term human ecodynamics and environmental change from the period of Iceland’s settlement in the Viking Age (AD 874-930) through the so-called Saga Age of the ear- ly and late medieval periods, and well into the long period of steady cooling in the Northern hemisphere popularly known as the Little Ice Age (AD 1350-1850). In her 1994 volume inaugurating the field of historical ecology Carole Crumley argued in favor of a “longitu- dinal” approach to the study of longue durée human ecodynamics. This approach takes a region as the focus for study and examines changing human-landscape-climate interactions through time in that particular place. IEM involves multiple frames of inquiry that are distinct yet cross-referential. Environmental change in Iceland dur- ing the late Iron Age and medieval period is investigated by physical PLENARY LECTURES 9 environmental sciences. Just how known processes of environmental change and adaptation may have shaped medieval Icelandic sagas and their socio-environmental preoccupations is of great interest, yet just as interesting are other questions concerning how these sagas may in turn have shaped understandings of the past, cultural foundation nar- ratives, environmental lore, local ecological knowledge etc. Enlisting environmental sciences and humanities scholarship in the common aim of framing and thereby better understanding nature, the IEM initiative excludes nothing as “post- interesting” or “pre-interesting.” Understanding Viking Age first settlement processes informs under- standing of 18th century responses to climate change, and 19th cen- tury resource use informs understanding of archaeological patterns visible at first settlement a millennium earlier. There is much to gain from looking at pathways (and their divergences) from both ends, and a long millennial scale perspective is one of the key contributions that the study of past “completed experiments in human ecodynam- ics” can make to attempts to achieve future sustainability. IEM is a case study of the Integrated History and future of People on Earth initiative (IHOPE) led by the international project AIMES (Analy- sis, Integration and Modeling of the Earth System), a core project of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme; the initiative is co-sponsored by PAGES (Past Global Changes) and IHDP (The In- ternational Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmen- tal Change). This talk brings together two of the main coordinators from IEM’s sponsoring organizations, NIES and NABO, to reflect on the particular challenges, innovations and advances anticipated in this unprecedented undertaking of integrated science and scholar- ship, a new model for the scientific framing of nature. FRAMING NATURE PRESENTATIONS 10 PRESENTATIONS 11 TRICKS OF NATURE: MIMICRY AND DISGUISE IN VICTORIAN NATURAL HISTORY WRITING WILL ABBERLEY St Anne’s College, University of Oxford, United Kingdom Through history, Western science, philosophy and culture have often conceptualized nature as a source of truth.