Riin Magnus | University of Tartu (original) (raw)

Uploads

Papers by Riin Magnus

Sign Systems Studies

This paper suggests how natural disasters may serve as the final propulsion for changes already t... more This paper suggests how natural disasters may serve as the final propulsion for changes already taking place within a society. While focusing on shifts in human–non-human animal relations, this text also discusses their embedding in broader transformations of human–environment relations and the underlying economic and cultural change. It carves out interspecific dependencies that constitute an agro-ecosystem and follows their demise as the agricultural species are switched to market economic production in a post-disaster context. It thereby suggests that the human-facilitated semiotic fitting of the agricultural species is replaced by human-imposed fitting in which the species composition is largely determined by the market prices. At the same time, the paper draws attention to the cessation and transformation of human–non-human communication as a marker, but also an experiential corollary, of modernization and market economy. As a case study, it focuses on the 2010 Mt. Merapi erupt...

Society & Animals

This paper explores bird sound imitation as a particular type of interspecies interaction. Using ... more This paper explores bird sound imitation as a particular type of interspecies interaction. Using questionnaires, interviews, and participatory observations, a survey was conducted among Estonian birders to find out about the prevalence of the practice, the diversity of imitated species, the means of imitation, and the attitudes of birders towards the use of recordings in the field. The study found that 55 species of birds from 11 orders were imitated and using one’s own voice was the most common way of imitating birds. The choice of the method of imitation depended on the purpose and context of imitation. Most birders supported the use of playbacks for scientific purposes, but not for daily birding. With the easy availability of playback technologies, there are increased concerns about the ubiquitous presence of disturbing factors. At the same time, however, the technological boundlessness is balanced by the heightened ethical self-reflection of birders.

Väitekirja elektrooniline versioon ei sisalda publikatsioone.Materiaalne linnakeskkond ja selles ... more Väitekirja elektrooniline versioon ei sisalda publikatsioone.Materiaalne linnakeskkond ja selles kehtivad käitumisreeglid sisaldavad kindlaid ootusi märgisüsteemide suhtes, mille abil keskkonda kasutada. Juhtkoera ja nägemispuudega inimese märgisüsteemide kombinatsioon eeldab olemasolevate ootustega kohanemist, aga loob ka toimetulekuks uusi lahendusi. Kahe eri liiki isendi märgisüsteemide ühendus hõlmab objektide seniste tähenduste teisendamist, arvestades teist tandemi osapoolt; liikidevahelise kommunikatsiooni kaudu tähenduste täpsustamist ning ühiskonnas leiduvate loom-inimene piiride proovilepanekut. Juhtkoera ja inimese tandemi üks osapool ei ole vaid osa teise laiendatud kehaplaanist – tandemi liikmetel on kummalgi individuaalne omailm, mis hõlmab kindlaid tähendusseoseid. Koostöö käigus see muutub, kuivõrd tähenduste moodustumisel tuleb arvesse võtta ka teise tandemiliikme huvisid. Isenditevahelise kommunikatsiooni kaudu suunatakse juhtkoera töös individuaalseid tajuprotsess...

Biosemiotics, 2008

On the basis of a comparative analysis of the biosemiotic work of Jakob von Uexküll and of variou... more On the basis of a comparative analysis of the biosemiotic work of Jakob von Uexküll and of various theories on biological holism, this article takes a look at the question: what is the status of a semiotic approach in respect to a holistic one? The period from 1920 to 1940 was the peak-time of holistic theories, despite the fact that agreement on a unified and accepted set of holistic ideas was never reached. A variety of holisms, dependent on the cultural and disciplinary contexts, is sketched here from the works of

Sign Systems Studies, 2019

Urban trees are considered to be essential and integral to urban environments, to contribute to t... more Urban trees are considered to be essential and integral to urban environments, to contribute to the biodiversity of cities as well as to the well-being of their inhabitants. In addition, urban trees may also serve as living memorials, helping to remember major social eruptions and to cement continuity with the past, but also as social disruptors that can induce clashes between different ideals of culture. In this paper, we focus on a specific case, a Ginkgo biloba specimen growing at Süda Street in the centre of Tallinn, in order to demonstrate how the shifts in the meaning attributed to a non-human organism can shape cultural memory and underlie social confrontations. Integrating an ecosemiotic approach to human-non-human interactions with Juri Lotman’s approach to cultural memory and cultural space, we point out how non-human organisms can delimit cultural space at different times and how the ideal of culture is shaped by different ways of incorporating or other species in the hum...

Lauri Linask, Riin Magnus The articles gathered in this special issue of Sign Systems Studies dis... more Lauri Linask, Riin Magnus The articles gathered in this special issue of Sign Systems Studies discuss a variety of discourses, theoretical models, artistic activities, principles of design, etc. which in one way or another expose and manifest, but also guide, our perception of nature and human-environment relations. Most of the articles in this issue have grown out of presentations made at the conference Framing Nature: Signs, Stories, and Ecologies of Meaning, which took place in Tartu from 29 April 2014 to 3 May 2014.3 Humans create multiple environments by using various frames of interpretation. In addition, specific means of expression and modes of signification give nature a particular shape and character. However, framing nature is not a one-way process – i.e. the semiotic frames are not simply of nature, but they are part of nature as they have an effect on the ecological processes themselves. Such a modified environment in turn becomes an object of further models, interpreta...

Sign Systems Studies, 2015

In order to estimate the current situation of teaching materials available in the field of semiot... more In order to estimate the current situation of teaching materials available in the field of semiotics, we are providing a comparative overview and a worldwide bibliography of introductions and textbooks on general semiotics published within last 50 years, i.e. since the beginning of institutionalization of semiotics. In this category, we have found over 130 original books in 22 languages. Together with the translations of more than 20 of these titles, our bibliography includes publications in 32 languages. Comparing the authors, their theoretical backgrounds and the general frames of the discipline of semiotics in different decades since the 1960s makes it possible to describe a number of predominant tendencies. In the extensive bibliography thus compiled we also include separate lists for existing lexicons and readers of semiotics as additional material not covered in the main discussion. The publication frequency of new titles is growing, with a certain depression having occurred i...

Biosemiotics, 2009

Jakob von Uexküll was a well-know author in the German biological and philosophical circles in th... more Jakob von Uexküll was a well-know author in the German biological and philosophical circles in the first decades of the 20th century. His work influenced Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger, Ludwig von Bertalanffy and Konrad Lorenz, among many others. However, tempora mutantur, after the Modern Synthesis in biology, his texts became non-understandable in the framework of the mainstream discourse for several decades. But what is fascinating is that in 1987 he is mentioned as one out of 8 major classics of semiotics (see T. von Uexküll 1987; in Krampen et al. 1987), and in 2001, as one out of 50 major classics of biology of all times (see Hassenstein 2001, in Jahn and Schmitt 2001). Meanwhile, many minds got infected by Uexküll's Theoretische Biologie-Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gilles Deleuze, René Thom (not to mention those who in many different fields have used some of his concepts-Ortega y Gasset, Giorgio Agamben, Noam Chomsky, Arne Naess),... and above all, Thomas A. Sebeok. In 2007, Florian Mildenberger has published a monograph on the life and work of Jakob von Uexküll, entitled Umwelt als Vision: Leben und Werk Jakob von Uexkülls (1864-1944). It is the first full scientific biography written about Uexküll, predated just by Mildenberger's own professorial dissertation (2005). 1 The monograph differs from previous dissertations written on Uexküll (among these, Chien 2005; Helbach 1989; Schmidt 1980) in its comprehensive interweaving of the chronologically ordered biographical data and the development of Uexküll's and his contemporary scientific ideas and ideologies.

Sign Systems Studies, 2018

Ethnologia Scandinavica, 2017

Wild Animals in Human Assistance : Historical Practices, Semiotic Grounds and Future Prospects

Biosemiotics, 2020

Hybridity has been explored in biology, technology, linguistics, cultural studies, etc., where th... more Hybridity has been explored in biology, technology, linguistics, cultural studies, etc., where the entities involved in the hybridisation process differ depending on the discipline. To discuss the aspects of how humans interact with other biological beings, what kind of a role human technologies may play in these connections, and what type of new relations are created, an international conference titled Semiotics of Hybrid Natures: Anthropogenic Ecosystems, Multimodalities, Transformed Umwelts took place in Estonia (Tartu) from 8th to 10th of November 2018.1 The objective of the conference was to gather scholars from fields of semiotics, technology, design, culture, philosophy, etc. to create new and exchange current knowledge on the myriad of phenomena of hybrid natures. This gathering also enabled the participants to clarify research methods applicable for analysing hybrid natures in the fields of ecosemiotics, zoosemiotics and environmental humanities. The current special issue i...

Wetlands Ecology and Management

Ponds—small, isolated freshwater bodies—have vanished in large numbers during the last decades. D... more Ponds—small, isolated freshwater bodies—have vanished in large numbers during the last decades. Despite such great loss, the number of natural small water bodies has still remained quite high in Estonia. Nevertheless, many pond-related species, including amphibians such as the northern crested newt Triturus cristatus and the common spadefoot toad Pelobates fuscus—are in decline in Estonia, suggesting that the conditions of extant natural ponds might not be optimal. However, these conditions have never been examined. To halt the decline of these two pond-breeding species, more than 400 ponds have been constructed or restored from 2004 to 2014 in Estonia. In this study we compared 85 natural and 85 constructed ponds (which were created or restored especially for T. cristatus and/or P. fuscus) to find out: (i) what the main differences are between natural ponds and ponds specially created for threatened species; (ii) whether natural ponds provide breeding conditions for local amphibians; (iii) given the decline of T. cristatus and P. fuscus, what are the characteristics lacking in natural ponds, due to which they are not providing quality breeding habitats for these species. Whereas the constructed ponds were located in open habitats with mineral soils, the natural ponds were mainly in mires and forests, being thus more shaded. Amphibian diversity was higher in the constructed ponds and was positively related to the depth of the pond, the clarity of the water, the presence of slanting slopes, the absence of fish and the presence of nearby fields. T. cristatus preferred constructed ponds for reproduction, while the breeding site selection of P. fuscus was determined mainly by terrestrial habitat characteristics. Importantly, when the threatened species were removed from the sample, the diversity of common amphibians did not differ between natural and constructed ponds, suggesting that in our study sites natural water bodies act still as breeding sites for common species, but not for threatened ones. We conclude that pond construction is an important tool to halt the decline of threatened species, even in landscapes where natural ponds are still preserved.

Sign Systems Studies

Society & Animals

Biosemiotics, 2008

Sign Systems Studies, 2019

Sign Systems Studies, 2015

Biosemiotics, 2009

Sign Systems Studies, 2018

Ethnologia Scandinavica, 2017

Wild Animals in Human Assistance : Historical Practices, Semiotic Grounds and Future Prospects

Biosemiotics, 2020

Wetlands Ecology and Management

Review of Umwelt als Vision: Leben und Werk Jakob von Uexkülls (1864–1944). by Florian Mildenberg... more Review of Umwelt als Vision: Leben und Werk Jakob von Uexkülls (1864–1944). by Florian Mildenberger Stuttgart, Franz Steiner Verlag, 2007, 320 pages

by Remo Gramigna, Kalevi Kull, Ott Heinapuu, Kati Lindström, Riin Magnus, Maarja Ojamaa, Tiit Remm, Ene-Reet Soovik, Renata Sõukand, Morten Tønnessen, pani ola, Eva Lepik, and Silvi Salupere

Coca, Juan R.; Rodríguez, Claudio J. (Ed.). Approaches to Biosemiotics. (25−39). Valladolid: Ediciones Universidad Valladolid. (Biosocial World: Biosemiotics and Biosociology ; 1)., 2023

The paper gives a synthetic overview of the current state of ecosemiotic research and proposes so... more The paper gives a synthetic overview of the current state of ecosemiotic research and proposes some new theoretical as well as applicational research vistas for the research field. Modern ecosemiotics has merged investigations of human interpretations of the environment and the semiotic activity of other species. In the era of the Anthropocene, humans are often the ones who determine the conditions of semiotic existence for other species. Furthermore, the symbol systems that humans use for interpreting the natural world form an integral part of such conditions. This paper therefore seeks for shifts in the existing symbolic systems that might help to relate to the environment as a semiosis based and regulated phenomenon. In more detail, it will explore the possibilities of dialogical approaches to support such a relation. Although several textual approaches to nature can be considered as potentially hegemonic and supporting the right of humans to treat nature from the grounds of ownership, this article will suggest that the perspectives on communication and dialogue offered by authors such as Mikhail Bakhtin may help to provide the necessary shifts of interpretation. Moreover, these kinds of interpretational grounds suggest ways for bridging the recognition of more-than-human semiotic relations with certain conservation ethics and practices of nature conservation.

Sign Systems Studies, 2018

The transportation and translocation of species beyond their natural habitats is considered to be... more The transportation and translocation of species beyond their natural habitats is considered to be one of the major causes of biodiversity loss these days. Concerns are growing also about urbanization and the resulting destruction of natural habitats. At the same time, the integration of urban environments into nature protection efforts has brought along the intent to apply the ecological alien species paradigm in cities. Yet, as the practices of urban landscaping demonstrate, this objective has not been achieved. In this article, we propose that the reasons behind it are largely related to the specifics of the city as a semiotic system. Multiplicity of codes and subjects of various origins is contested by the ecological alien species paradigm, yet characteristic of the urban semiotic environment. The city often serves the function of a cultural model, embodying the principles of setting the borders between Self and the Other. Also in this case, the ecological alien species paradigm has to face a different complex of meanings attributed to the Other. We demonstrate how two different models of the city are expressed in the interpretations of alien trees by using pyramid oaks and poplars in Estonia as an example. Given that cities are not only human habitats, but involve the life activities of a variety of non-human living beings, also the identification of Self and the Other depends on an interplay of cultural and ecological processes. We would like to suggest the as yet unestablished research field of urban ecosemiotics for studying the multilayered complex of biological, cultural and social semiotic processes characteristic of cities, including the primary distinction of Self and the Other. Sign Systems Studies 46(2/3), 2018, 319-342

Sign Systems Studies, 2019

Urban trees are considered to be essential and integral to urban environments , to contribute to ... more Urban trees are considered to be essential and integral to urban environments , to contribute to the biodiversity of cities as well as to the well-being of their inhabitants. In addition, urban trees may also serve as living memorials, helping to remember major social eruptions and to cement continuity with the past, but also as social disruptors that can induce clashes between different ideals of culture. In this paper, we focus on a specific case, a Ginkgo biloba specimen growing at Süda Street in the centre of Tallinn, in order to demonstrate how the shifts in the meaning attributed to a non-human organism can shape cultural memory and underlie social confrontations. Integrating an ecosemiotic approach to human-non-human interactions with Juri Lotman's approach to cultural memory and cultural space, we point out how non-human organisms can delimit cultural space at different times and how the ideal of culture is shaped by different ways of incorporating or other species in the human cultural ideal or excluding them from it.