Shared life: An introduction

4 page(s

Metal contamination budget at the river basin scale: an original Flux-Flow Analysis (F2A) for the Seine River

Material flow analysis and environmental contamination analysis are merged into a Flux-Flow analysis (F2A) as illustrated for the metal circulation in the Seine River catchment. F2A combines about 30 metal flows in the anthroposphere (14 million people) and/or metal fluxes in the environment (atmosphere, soils, and aquatic system) originating from two dozens of sources. The nature and quality of data is very heterogeneous going from downscaled national economic statistics to upscaled daily environmental surveys. <br><br> A triple integration is performed: space integration over the catchment (65 000 km<sup>2</sup>), time integration for the 1950–2000 trend analysed at 5 year resolution, and a conceptual integration resulting in two F2A indicators. <br><br> Despite the various data sources an average metal circulation is established for the 1994–2003 period and illustrated for zinc: (i) metal circulation in the anthroposphere is now two orders of magnitude higher than river outputs, (ii) long term metal storage, and their potential leaks, in soils, wastedumps and structures is also orders of magnitude higher than present river fluxes. Trend analysis is made through two F2A indicators, the per capita excess load at the river outlet and the leakage ratio (excess fluxes/metal demand). From 1950 to 2000, they both show a ten fold improvement of metal recycling while the metal demand has increased by 2.5 to 5 for Cd, Cu, Cr, Pb and Zn, and the population by 50%

Veganism

Narrowly understood, veganism is the practice of excluding all animal products from one’s diet, with the exception of human milk. More broadly, veganism is not only a food ethics, but it encompasses all other areas of life. As defined by the Vegan Society when it became an established charity in the UK in 1979, veganism is best understood as “a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude – as far as is possible and practicable – all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals and the environment”. There are two main moral justifications for veganism, both of which rely on a common assumption: that sentience, i.e., the capacity to feel pleasure and pain, is the necessary and sufficient trait to be morally considerable. In what follows, I present these two justifications and a third one which, although less popular, captures some core intuitions among vegans. I then present a challenge faced by veganism and two arguments that reject it as discriminatory, and briefly conclude

Metal contamination budget at the river basin scale: an original Flux-Flow Analysis (F2A) for the Seine River

International audienc

Cultural geographies of extinction: animal culture amongst Scottish ospreys

This paper explores cultural geographies of extinction. I trace the decline of the Scottish osprey during the nineteenth century, and its enduring, haunting presence in the landscape today. Taking inspiration from the environmental humanities, extinction is framed as an event affecting losses that exceed comprehension in terms merely of biological species numbers and survival rates. Disavowing the ‘species thinking’ of contemporary conservation biopolitics, the osprey’s extinction story pays attention to the worth of ‘animal cultures’. Drawing a hybrid conceptual framework from research in the environmental humanities, ‘speculative’ ethology and more-than-human geographies, I champion an experimental attention to the cultural geographies of animals in terms of historically contingent, communally shared, spatial practices and attachments. In doing so, I propose nonhuman cultural geographies as assemblages that matter, and which are fundamentally at stake in the face of extinction

The Australian pied butcherbird and the natureculture continuum

Background in zoömusicology. The discipline of zoömusicology is a pioneering enterprise that requires the collaboration of practices, methodologies, and expert knowledge from a variety of areas. Pre-existing models for such research by musicologists are either absent or at best insubstantial. The various tasks at hand include the collection of extant recordings, the observation and recording of animals in the field, sonographic examination (and notation where feasible), and various types of musicological analyses. Zoömusicology contends with the methodological and conceptual issues that arise when music theory, designed to illuminate human musical traditions (especially the Western classical one), is applied to animal song. Background in ethology. With the break with the Cartesian tradition of the animal machine, an authentic science of animal behaviour emerged over the last two centuries, evolving both conceptually and methodologically. For example, Darwin, Huxley, Haeckel, and others recognised that man is also an animal. Lorenz, von Frisch, and Tinbergen founded the field of ethology, where a major challenge remains: that of accepting that animal communication is pertinent to the realm of signification rather than merely the realm of information transmission. Aims. This paper aims to extend the range of contexts in which musicologists contribute. The paper proposes a methodology and a rationale for the study of birdsong by musicologists that, in addressing both sound and musical behaviour, could be relevant to a range of issues on the natureculture continuum

The animal outside the text

© 2014 Taylor and Francis. This interview ranges across a number of topics relevant to Dominique Lestel's thought: the history and philosophy of ethology; animal culture; realist-Cartesian and bi-constructivist ethology; biosemiotics; philo-sophical anthropology; animal studies; the other-than-human; veganism; and technology. It touches on thinkers including Bruno Latour, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Paul Shepard, and Donna Haraway

Dynamique hydro-morphologique historique de la Seine dans le secteur de la Bassée aval

ISSN: 2109-978