Abstract
The present article will introduce a proposition of semiotic methodology that can be used to diagnose cohabitation issues in cities between human inhabitants and non-human liminals. This methodology is built on a few sets of data that should be easy to obtain in any important city, and can therefore be utilised in a variety of situations. The different sets of data allow us to map the cohabitation semiosphere (following Hoffmeyer’s meaning of the term) of the situation along three axes: the materiality of the situation, the symbolic significance of the relationship, and the emotional significance of the interaction. These three aspects allow us to see gaps, paradoxes and points of consistency, enabling complex and multi-level understanding of the situation.
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Notes
In the case of the Tartu empirical study, two major ethological works were used: the noise repellents experimentation requested by the Tartu city government (report available in references), and the data from the bird team of the Bioveins Project (these ones were kindly shared by the team before the publication of their paper and cannot be communicated, but contact is in references for any needed request).
“The semiosphere is a sphere like the atmosphere, hydrosphere, or biosphere. It permeates these spheres from the innermost to outermost reaches and consists of communication: sound, scent movement, colors, forms, electrical fields, various waves, chemical signals, touch, and so forth – in short, the signs of life.” (Hoffmeyer, 2009).
In the case of corvids in Tartu, work on this aspect has been done by Timo Maran. It is still unpublished and untranslated from Estonian, but the basic principle of this analysis can already be found in (Maran, 2014).
The database results for Tartu can be accessed here: https://elurikkus.ee/regions/Linnad/Tartu%2520linn.
Especially since the most common ones can disappear in silence, precisely because inhabitants are so used to them that they would not notice the drop in population, as was the case with Passer domesticus (Corif & LPO, 2017).
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Acknowledgements
This study is based on a project funded by the Estonian research fund Mobilitas Pluss sissetulev järeldoktoritoetus (MOBJD) under grant MOBJD1010.
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Delahaye, P. A Methodology for the Study of Interspecific Cohabitation Issues in the City. Biosemiotics 16, 143–152 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-023-09526-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-023-09526-x