The goal of this diploma thesis called "Ethics of the Garden" is to introduce the ecological-ethical issue and the closely related question about the role of a mankind in the world. First of all, the main aim is to introduce the ecological-ethical concept of the American author Michael Pollan. In this concept, a garden is viewed as a source of elementary ethical principals that are applicable in the relationship of mankind to nature. That is why it is called "Ethics of the Garden". The practical part of the thesis is dedicated to the individual principles of this concept. It introduces its characteristics and it also gives specific examples of the practical application of the principles of the "Ethics of the garden" within the context of central Europe. Here only very few original ecosystems (untouched by human intervention) have survived and it is hard to find an ideal solution for the coexistence of mankind and nature. Keywords ecological ethics, environmental ethics, ethics of the garden, environment, nature, culture, civilization, intervention in nature, primary and secondary nature

Die begriffliche Unterscheidung von Geschlecht als einerseits biologischem Faktum (Sex) sowie anderseits als Produkt kultureller und sozialer Prozesse (Gender) geht auf Arbeiten zur Transsexualität in den sechziger Jahren zurück. Der feministische Diskurs griff die Unterscheidung auf und verstand sie in einem antibiologistischen Sinne. Die Sex-Gender-Unterscheidung impliziert jedoch auch die unhaltbare Annahme, dass es ein biologisches Substrat der Geschlechterdifferenz gäbe, welches kulturellen Unterscheidungen stets vorgängig wäre (latenter Biologismus). Wissenschaftstheoretische Arbeiten verweisen demgegenüber darauf, dass Natur stets durch die Brille der Kultur gesehen wird.

Als Stillen werden Tätigkeiten bezeichnet, bei denen der Säugling, in der Regel an der Brust der biologischen Mutter, ernährt wird. Sowohl der Einsatz als auch die Bedeutung des Stillens unterliegen historischen Konjunkturen. Aktuell stehen die Gesundheit von Säugling und stillendem Elternteil sowie die Beschreibung des Stillens als natürliche Ernährungsform einerseits und die Thematisierung des Stillens als Praxis der Re-Traditionalisierung von Elternschaft andererseits im Mittelpunkt der Auseinandersetzungen.

The use in pictorial art of visual reference to prototypes and conventions in encoding reality forms the crux of the theoretical research. The theoretical component complements the practical research, which focuses on the interplay between perceptions of 'reality' and visual conventions in landscape art. The existence of diverse realities, based on individual ideological and sociocultural perspectives, is acknowledged. In encoding these realities, artists may draw on a reservoir of stylistic, formal and conceptual prototypes. Visual reference constitutes an allegorical procedure because the artist refers to an antecedent text in the representation of a particular 'reality'. Pictorial signs also rely on conventions to convey meaning. Both the perception and the artistic recreation of different realities may thus be regarded as recycling processes. In a world saturated with visual information, reference to prototypes is a powerful procedure which assists contemporary pictorial artists in the creation of meaningful images of current realities. / Art History, Visual Arts & Musicology / M.A. (Fine Arts)

This project engages with the Kogi, an Amerindian indigenous people from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountain range in northern Colombia. Kogi leaders have been engaging in a consistent ecological-political activism to protect the Sierra Nevada from environmentally harmful developments. More specifically, they have attempted to raise awareness and understanding among the wider public about why and how these activities are destructive according to their knowledge and relation to the world. The foreign nature of these underlying ontological understandings, statements, and practices, has created difficulties in conveying them to mainstream, scientific society. Furthermore, the pre-determined cosmological foundations of Kogi society, continuously asserted by them, present a problem to anthropology in terms of suitable analytical categories. My work aims to clarify and understand Kogi environmental activism in their own terms, aided by anthropological concepts and “Western” forms of expression. I elucidate and explain how Kogi ecology and public politics are embedded in an old, integrated, and complex way of being, knowing, and perceiving on the Sierra Nevada. I argue that theoretically this task involves taking a realist approach that recognises the Kogi’s cause as intended truth claims of practical environmental relevance. By avoiding constructivist and interpretivist approaches, as well as the recent “ontological pluralism” in anthropology, I seek to do justice to the Kogi’s own essentialist and universalist ontological principles, which also implies following their epistemological rationale. For this purpose, I immersed myself for two years in Kogi life on the Sierra, and focused on structured learning sessions with three Mamas, Kogi spiritual leaders and knowledge specialists. I reflect on how this interaction was possible because my project was compatible with the Mamas’ own desire to clarify and contextualise the Kogi ecological cause. After presenting this experience, I analyse the material as a multifaceted, interrelated, and elaborate system to reflect the organic, structured composition of Kogi and Sierra, also consciously conveyed as such by the Mamas. I hereby intend to show how the Kogi reproduce, live, and sustain this system through daily practices and institutions, and according to cosmological principles that guide a knowledgeable, ecological relationality with things, called ‘the Law of Origin’. To describe this system, I develop a correspondingly holistic and necessary integration of the anthropological concepts of cosmology, ontology, epistemology, and ecology. Based on this, I argue that Kogi eco-politics are equally embedded in this system, and constitute a contemporary attempt to maintain their regulatory relations with the Sierra Nevada and complement their everyday care-taking practices and rituals. In Kogi terms, this continuity and coherence is a moral imperative and environmental necessity. Thus framing and clarifying Kogi eco-politics may enrich insights into the nature of indigenous ecological knowledge, and may help address environmental problems.

Avhandlingen handlar om användandet av assisterad befruktning i Danmark och Sverige. Teknologierna är intressanta eftersom de skapar möjligheter för barn att födas som annars inte skulle ha blivit till. De utmanar också normerande föreställningar om sexualitet, etnicitet, normalitet, ålder, kön och släktskap. Genom att undersöka vad som sker i mötet mellan normer, patienter, personal, teknologi och könsceller på fertilitetskliniker och spermabanker, skapar avhandlingen insikt i de skapelse- och förändringsprocesser som äger rum. Analysen visar hur beslutsfattare, personal och patienter förhåller sig till teknologierna. Den genomgående princip som används för att sätta etiska gränser utgörs av försök att imitera naturen. Denna princip omförhandlas och förändras dock ständigt. Omförhandlingar kan äga rum i möten med teknologin eller genom kroppars sätt att reagera på. De äger också rum då naturaliseringsprincipen skapar absurda situationer, t.ex. sådana i vilka patienter och deras kommande barn stigmatiseras och marginaliseras. Med utgångspunkt i den empiriska analysen bidrar avhandlingen dessutom till en teoretisk förståelse av hur materialiseringsprocesser (skapelseprocesser) äger rum i mötet mellan diskurser och materiell agens. Avhandlingen är skriven med utgångspunkt i feministiska och teknovetenskapliga studier och kan läsas som ett bidrag till feministisk ny materialtetsteori och metod. / This thesis investigates the use of assisted reproduction in Denmark and Sweden. Assisted reproduction is fascinating, because it enables the creation of children who would not have been born otherwise. At the same time, it challenges existing norms concerning sexuality, ethnicity, normality, age, gender and kinship. The processes of creation and change that take place at fertility clinics and sperm banks are analyzed by exploring the encounters between norms, patients, employees, technology and gametes. The analysis shows how legislators, patients and employees relate to and manage the use of these technologies. It illustrates that the predominant principle used for setting ethical limits is the mimicking of nature. However, this principle is constantly negotiated and changed. One reason is that negotiations take place in an encounter with the agency of the technology, gametes and body. Another reason for the change of the naturalization principle is that absurd situations, such as stigmatization and marginalization of patients and their technologically conceived children, take place. The empirical analysis also contributes to a theoretical understanding of how materialization processes (creation processes) take place in the encounters between discourse and material agency. The thesis is written with a point of departure in feminist science studies, and can be read as a contribution to feminist new materialist theory and method.

The use in pictorial art of visual reference to prototypes and conventions in encoding reality forms the crux of the theoretical research. The theoretical component complements the practical research, which focuses on the interplay between perceptions of 'reality' and visual conventions in landscape art. The existence of diverse realities, based on individual ideological and sociocultural perspectives, is acknowledged. In encoding these realities, artists may draw on a reservoir of stylistic, formal and conceptual prototypes. Visual reference constitutes an allegorical procedure because the artist refers to an antecedent text in the representation of a particular 'reality'. Pictorial signs also rely on conventions to convey meaning. Both the perception and the artistic recreation of different realities may thus be regarded as recycling processes. In a world saturated with visual information, reference to prototypes is a powerful procedure which assists contemporary pictorial artists in the creation of meaningful images of current realities. / Art History, Visual Arts and Musicology / M.A. (Fine Arts)

Gehirnforschung ist ein naturwissenschaftlicher Forschungsbereich, der sich aus den Disziplinen Anatomie, Embryologie, Physiologie, Pharmakologie und Psychologie entwickelt hat. Gendertheoretisch informierte historische Studien zur Gehirnforschung fokussieren ideologiekritische und diskursanalytische Betrachtungen androzentrischer bzw. sexistischer Körpervorstellungen von der Antike bis zum 21. Jh., welche u. a. die bürgerliche Geschlechterordnung argumentativ gestützt und naturalisiert hatten.

Posthumanistischer Feminismus ist ein transdisziplinäres Wissenschaftsgebiet, das dem kritischen Posthumanismus zugeordnet werden kann. In diesem rückt die Frage nach der vergeschlechtlichten Dimension des Humanismus-Diskurses in den Fokus, der u. a. auf der androzentrischen Gleichsetzung von Mensch und Mann sowie der rassistischen Gleichsetzung von Mensch und Weiß-Sein beruht. Für eine feministisch-posthumanistische Forschungsprogrammatik gelten folgende Perspektiven als zentral: Der feministische Posthumanismus gesteht allen Lebewesen, Artefakten, Hybridwesen und weiteren belebten und unbelebten Konfigurationen Handlungsfähigkeit (agency) und Aktivität zu und kritisiert die Differenzierung zwischen Natur und Kultur und daran anknüpfende Grenzziehungen zwischen männlich/weiblich sowie Weiß-Sein/Schwarz-Sein. Zudem wird die Frage nach Körperfigurationen und -grenzen sowie nach deren sozialem Konstruktionscharakter und ihrer Kontextabhängigkeit aufgeworfen.

This thesis examines the Swedish 19th century family magazine, Svenska Familj-Journalen, and the interaction between bourgeois attitudes, science, and depictions of animals. My main purpose is to demonstrate how image-text divergences can discover ruptures between 19th century bourgeoise ideology and science. The study consists of a selection of illustrations and texts, the majority being popular zoology depictions that were published in the magazine between 1877–1882. By using nature-culture oppositions as well as art historian Sonya Petersson’s concept of the counteractive illustration, I am able to elucidate differences between texts and images. The texts and images are subsequently analyzed by relating them to contemporary scientific discourses, as well as to the early Swedish animal welfare and nature conservation movements.  The results of this study are that image-text divergences reveal 1) that images of animals could depict the animal as such, rather than as a symbol of bourgeois ideals, 2) an insecurity in the magazine’s attitudes toward Darwin’s theory of sexual selection, illustrating circumstances where the magazine chose to adhere to its ideological dispositions rather than accept Darwinian consensus, 3) that the magazine, in publishing texts that were critical of wild life exploitation, diverged from its progress oriented narrative, and that its use of images counteracted these messages.