This dissertation investigates the visual and verbal representations of animals in a selection of commercial picture books for a young readership of preschool children. The picture books selected are part of the Little Golden Book series. The first twelve books in this series were published in the United States in 1942 and are still in print today, while new books are continually being published. Because these popular picture books have had a broad readership from their inception and the books in the series have a uniform aesthetics, a comparative analysis provides insight into mainstream human-animal relationships.  Children’s literature is never innocent, and fraught with power imbalances. Animals become political beings, not only in the sense that they convey a didactic message, but in the sense that each animal representation carries a host of ideas and assumptions about human-animal relations with it. Using a theoretical framework that is grounded in Human Animal Studies (HAS), and more specifically literary animal studies, this dissertation analyzes the representation of human-animal interactions and relationships in different contexts.  Before the advent of HAS, anthropocentric, humanist interpretations of animal presence in children’s literature used to be prevalent. Commercial picture books in particular could benefit from readings that investigate animal presence without immediately resorting to humanist interpretations. One way of doing that is to start by questioning how interspecies difference and hierarchy is constructed in these books, verbally, visually and in the interaction between words and images. Based on this, we can speculate about the consequences this may have for the reader’s conceptualization of human-animal relationships. In children’s literature speciesism and ageism often intersect, for example when young children are compared with (young) animals or when animals are presented as stand-ins for young children. This dissertation explores the mechanisms behind the representation of species difference in commercial picture books.  The aim of this study is to analyze how commercial picture books like the Little Golden Books harbor a potential to shape young readers’ ideas about humanity and animality, species difference and hierarchy and the possibilities of interspecies interactions. The socializing function that is an important component of all children’s books makes that these picture books can shape readers’ attitudes from an early age. When reading children’s books featuring animals, the particular way these animals are represented guides the reader towards an ideology – and in the West, this ideology is predominantly anthropocentric. In Western cultures, children and animals are commonly thought of as natural allies, and as such they are often depicted as opposed to adult culture.  This dissertation identifies the ways in which certain conservative tendencies are activated by these commercial picture books, but also emphasizes that they can be a subversive space where anthropocentrism can be challenged. The case studies developed in this dissertation demonstrate how even so-called ’unsophisticated’ picture books contain interesting strains of animal related ideology worthy of in-depth analysis. The visual and verbal dimensions of these picture books show that these stories are embedded in a cultural context that helps give meaning to the animals. A recurring concern is the function of anthropomorphism and the role it plays in how we value the animals in these books. I am particularly interested in how picture books depict various degrees of anthropomorphism, because it has the potential to challenge species boundaries and disrupt the human-animal dichotomy.

This thesis focuses on the image of "hlava" (head) in the Czech linguistic picture of the world. It is based on theories and methods of cognitive linguistics. The purpose of the thesis is to describe the structure of the meaning of the word hlava. The paper by I. Vaňková and V. Vitkovskaya was used as a methodological and theoretical starting point. In that paper four semantic profiles of "hlava" are defined. The results of Vaňková and Vitkovskaya were compared with the findings of our research. We try to find out, whether the mentioned profiles are valid on a larger linguistic material, too. Two types of data are analysed - systemic data (especially phraseology, then also etymology of the word, derivatives, compounds and synonyms) and corpus materials (from Czech National Corpus). Then, we also compare the differences in the findings between systemic and textual (corpus) data. Finally, all results are summarized in the cognitive definition of hlava.

This thesis first describes and analyzes the key concepts and rationalities that are dominant in the content of the Environmental Enforcement Act (EEA). The research project concludes that despite legislative shifts towards increased punishment and deterrence, key concepts and rationalities such as the importance of economic globalization, the continuation of risk-management and anthropocentric values, and the dominance of staples development can be observed in the content of the EEA. The EEA also reflects growing concerns towards managing known structural economic problems such as Canada’s staples development and economic globalization. Secondly, this thesis critically evaluates whether the EEA is likely to contribute towards the effectiveness of Canadian environmental governance strategies. The EEA is likely to be ineffective based on observations of structural challenges in environmental governance and the Canadian political economic context. Neoliberalism, economic globalization, risk management, anthropocentrism, and staples based economic development characterize the problems identified in existing research that the content of the EEA does not adequately address.

Syftet studien är att undersöka hur en skönlitterär barnbok öppnar för samtal om ekologisk hållbar utveckling med elever i årskurs 3. Barnboken som används ochanalyseras heter Lovis Ansjovis och jorden (2017). Den analyseras genom ett ekokritiskt perspektiv och boken läses upp för elever i helklass under ett lektionstillfälle. Efter högläsningen diskuterar eleverna tankar som boken gav dem. Deras funderingar skrivs upp i en tankekarta. Tankekartan, vår observation underlektionstillfället och textanalysen, ligger till grund för studiens resultat. Den teoretiska utgångspunkten som studien grundar sig på är ekokritik. Resultatet visar att Lovis Ansjovis och jorden främst skildrar ekologisk hållbar utveckling ur ett antropocentriskt perspektiv, med små inslag av ekocentrism. Eleverna visar under lektionstillfället med bokens hjälp en medvetenhet om ekologisk hållbar utveckling, som de kan samtala om.

The diploma thesis deals with the text-forming and pragmatic potential of phraseological units in advertising. The aim is to document the phraseological apparatus within the Czech and Slovak advertising space from 2017 to 2019. The theoretical basis of the work are the concepts of two dimensions of phraseology - forms and faces of the idioms, linguistic actualization and linguistic picture of the world. In the practical part, idioms in selected Czech and Slovak advertising communications are interpreted by a descriptive and comparative method through a qualitative analysis. The anthropocentric orientation of phraseology and the linguistic image of the world is confirmed, as well as the thesis about the dominance of somatic components in phraseological units (life and phraseological universals). Idioms, linguistic peculiarities, an aestheticizing factor with a charge of expressiveness, an attractive function and the ability to evoke a persuasive effect, have proven to be productive and effective means of expression of advertising messages that can present any message (social, economical, ecological, educational or cultural) in an understandable, entertaining and attractive way, helping to meet the basic requirements of advertising.

Ces dernières années, l'autorité de l'exceptionnalisme humain a de plus en plus été remise en question par un certain nombre d'artistes contemporains. Leurs œuvres non-anthropocentriques reconnaissent le rôle fondamental que jouent les acteurs non-humains dans la production artistique. Pour eux, le non-humain inclut des entités biologiques et non biologiques, corporelles et incorporelles. Cette thèse examine plusieurs pratiques artistiques qui, depuis les années 1990, attirent l'attention sur l’agentivité [agency] non-humaine. À cette fin, elles sont analysées à travers certaines théories interdisciplinaires correspondantes qui se sont développées de manière concomitante. Elles sont en outre comparées à des approches théoriques influentes qui réduisent l’art à des constructions sociales. Cette étude se déploie en trois parties inspirées par la thèse de Donna Haraway sur l’effacement de trois frontières à la fin du XXe siècle : la frontière entre les humains et les animaux, entre les organismes et les machines ainsi qu'entre le matériel et l’immatériel. Avec la dissolution de ces frontières et avec la capacité d’action qui est accordée aux entités non-humaines, le monde de l’art commence à englober des assemblages plus complexes et variés. Par conséquent, cette étude tente de décrire les nouvelles formes et les sens qui en émergent à mesure que des artistes adoptent un point de vue non-anthropocentrique. / In recent years, the authority of human exceptionalism has increasingly come into question by a number of contemporary artists. Their non-anthropocentric works acknowledge the fundamental role that non-human actors play in artistic production. For them, the non-human includes both biological and non-biological, corporeal and incorporeal entities. This dissertation examines several artistic practices that, in various ways since the 1990s, draw attention to non-human agency. To this end, I analyze these works in the context of corresponding cross-disciplinary theories which developed concurrently with these practices. In addition, I contrast them with influential theoretical approaches that reduce art to social constructions. This dissertation is divided into three parts, each matching the three boundaries that Donna Haraway identified as dissolving at the end of the 20th century: the boundary between humans and animals, between organisms and machines, and between the material and the immaterial. With the dissolution of these boundaries and the granting of agency to non-human entities, the art world begins to encompass more complex and multifarious assemblages. Accordingly, this paper attempts to show the novel forms and meaning that emerge as artists adopt a non-anthropocentric point of view.

The issue of ecological ethics has often been discussed because it is important for the development of further generations. Nature and culture are not at the same level, yet culture is subordinate to nature. Because of human influence, the harmony of nature is endangered and we live in an ecological crisis. This master's thesis compares the opinions of experts in Czech environment who perceive the ecological ethics, collisions of nature and culture and environmental sphere from the point of philosophy. In the first part, there is a theoretical basis of ecological ethics and the elementary classification. Further, the development of ecological ethics in the Czech phylosophical thinking is presented. In the main part, the author always explores two selected ideas of Czech professionals - Erazim Kohák, Josef Šmajs, Hana Librová, Petr Jemelka and Jan Patočka. The conclusion of the thesis is that although all the authors come from various conceptions, their results are more or less corresponding. It is fundamental to accept a personal responsibility and not to long for power and profit. It is imporant to indicate and become aware of ecological crisis and start to solve it on our own at first (e. g. by voluntary modesty and awareness that we leave a legacy for further generations). We do not need to live...

From our earliest days of childhood, our exposure to certain species is confusing and contradictory, with animals like the beloved characters who fill our storybooks moulded into unrecognisable shapes and served up to us in deceptively happy packaging. With a recognition of this cognitive dissonance as a starting point, this report seeks to highlight the inconsistency of teaching children to love and respect animals whilst at the same time to accept the eating and usage of them.  Whilst the topic of animal farming is finally beginning to be taken seriously in conversations about environmental sustainability, its ethical implications for both humans and nonhumans remain massively overlooked. My project aims to bring the conversation about animal rights to the forefront of our moral considerations with childhood education as an entry point.  In collaboration with a primary school class (ages 9-11) and an animal sanctuary, I ran a three-part workshop designed to encourage interspecies thinking and provide a space for students to critically evaluate mainstream attitudes and assumptions towards nonhuman animals and, by extension, to question current norms surrounding animal use and consumption.

This is an ecocritically oriented study with elements of autoethnography, of Stina Jackson's book Ödesmark and Therése Söderlind's Norrlands svårmod: roman om ett försvinnande. With a focus on the portrayal of Swedish northern nature in literature the study investigates whether the Norrland view of nature has changed since Romanticism or whether the Norrland forests are still as dark, mysterious and magical as they were during Romanticism. The study also examines whether nature is described as anthropomorphic or metaphysical in these novels. Finally, the essay discusses how the "non-human" is portrayed in the books and how it is used to alienate on different levels. As a result, the study shows that there are still romantic elements in nature literature that are dark, mysterious, and magical. Nature is described slightly differently between the authors; Söderlind has a more anthropocentric approach to the environment in her book while Jackson maintains a more metaphysical perspective. Jackson's metaphysical perspective gives her characters animalistic appearance and behaviours, alienating them in society. In Söderlind's anthropocentric perspective, nature makes a backdrop for the characters' lives.

[pt] Considerando a insuficiência do direito internacional ambiental frente às crises da era do antropoceno, a presente pesquisa busca analisar as questões fundacionais das normas jurídicas internacionais. Para tanto, primeiramente, será observado o discurso presente nas três principais declarações gerais do direito internacional ambiental (Declaração de Estocolmo, Declaração do Rio e O Futuro que Queremos) de maneira crítica e reflexiva. Em seguida, será explorada a construção de significados que sustentam a visão de mundo legitimada por essas normas, como o ideal por desenvolvimento, a colonialidade e certa concepção sobre natureza, humanidade e a relação entre eles. Por fim, serão levantados questionamentos sobre as possibilidades de futuros alternativos que derivam dessas categorias, como o reconhecimento dos direitos da natureza, e os limites que as categorias existentes impõem a imaginários dissidentes. Com isso, observa-se que a forma com que o direito internacional ambiental é construído pressupõe a não problematização da exclusão constitutiva de outros do sistema internacional moderno. Portanto, é necessário questionar essas próprias categorias fundacionais, não só do direito internacional (geral e ambiental), como do sistema internacional e estatal como um todo, como um convite para uma especulação construtiva sobre quais futuros somos capazes de imaginar e construir. / [en] Considering the shortcoming of international environmental law in dealing with the crises of the era of the Anthropocene, this research seeks to analyze some foundational categories of international legal norms. With this in mind, firstly, the discourse of the three main general declarations of international environmental law (Stockholm Declaration, Rio92 and Rio +20) will be observed in a critical and reflective way, with the help of an enunciative discourse analysis. Then, some accounts will be traced about the construction of meanings that support the ontology legitimized by these norms, such as the ideal for development, coloniality and a certain conception about nature, humanity and the relationship between them. Finally, considering the roles of imaginaries and constructions of futures, questions will be raised about the possibilities of alternative futures that derive from these concepts, such as the recognition of the rights of nature and the limits that the existing categories impose on dissident imaginaries. Hence, it can be observed that the way in which international environmental law is constructed presupposes that the constitutive exclusion of others from the modern international system is not problematized. Therefore, it is crucial to question these very foundational categories, not only of international law (general and environmental), but of the international and state systems as a whole, as an invitation to face the end of the world through constructive speculation about which futures we are able to imagine and build.