Åbo Akademi: Open Journal Systems
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The Convention on Animal Protection: The Missing Link in a One Health Global Strategy for Pandemic Prevention
Full text linkAs the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates, society’s failure to address animal well-being has had grave consequences not just for animals but also for humans. The emergence of zoonotic diseases is largely a result of high-risk contact with and mistreatment of animals, and it obligates states to assess the risks and mitigate, if not prevent, the underlying harms to animals that ensue. In keeping with the One Health approach, the proposed Convention on Animal Protection for Public Health, Animal Welfare, and the Environment (CAP) lays the groundwork for a comprehensive global strategy to address the missing link in other approaches to the pandemic—specifically by recognizing explicitly that the protection of animal well-being is good for animals, for people, and for the planet.
This Article sets CAP in its historical context, capturing how previous international agreements have been reached to preserve the exploitation of animals as living resources but have not ventured much further than that. The Article looks at how high-risk contact with and mistreatment of animals led to the emergence of COVID-19 and highlights how existing legal frameworks are ill-equipped to prevent similar pandemics. The Article then turns to a discussion of CAP—its origins with the adoption of an American Bar Association (ABA) policy urging the negotiation of a treaty to prevent pandemics by advancing animal protection and welfare, as well as its structure and provisions as framed by its first draft—and distinguishes CAP from other treaty proposals. In conclusion, the Article underscores the opportunity CAP presents not just to help prevent future pandemics but also to advance animals’ intrinsic interests, which are inextricably interwoven with our own
Respect for animals - with what effects?
Full text linkIn this paper I interrogate the introduction of the concept of respect for animals, i.e the recognition of animals’ intrinsic value, in the new Swedish Animal Welfare Act (2018:1192). Drawing on poststructural theory and Nussbaum’s dignity approach, I use critical policy analysis to examine key government propositions and official government reports between 2011 and 2018. The previous Animal Welfare Act (1988:534) is used to assess possible conceptual change linked to the introduction of the new concept. Even though the concept of respect for animals does not have material legal impact for the animals, through my findings I draw attention to the political effects of the concept. I show that discourses around increased productivity in animal-based agriculture were aligned with discourses around global climate change mitigation and the fight against antimicrobial resistance. While competitiveness and productivity were considered state responsibilities, respect for animals, on the other hand, became seen as an individual moral responsibility for the population rather than as a responsibility for protection by the state. Thereby, respect for animals, as it is directed towards the population, reflects the old anti-cruelty laws rather than a modern animal welfare law enforced by the state. An effect related to the concept as applied in the Swedish Animal Welfare Act is the marginalisation of ethics and political agency of citizens. The potentially transformative question of what respect for animals ought to mean for our political relationship with animals remains unaddressed
”Går jag till sängs med tolv Guds änglar…”: den judisk-kristna konsten att somna och avsomna i bild och bön
Full text linkTitle: “Can death be sleep…”: the Judæo-Christian Art of Dying and Sleeping Well in Picture and PrayerIn Swedish oral tradition, as well as in one example of Dalecarlian folk painting from the late 18th century, an invocation of twelve (occasionally fourteen) angels standing around the bed is evident from at least the 17th century. This invocation, while having taken on several different functions, has predominantly been used as a bedtime prayer but has also been sung during wakes in the home. It parallels numerous European angel prayers, the most famous of which is probably the German version Abends wenn ich schlafen geh, and can be traced to 14th-century ars moriendi practices.The prayer bears a striking resemblance to the Jewish Ashkenazic bedtime invocation of the four angels Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and Uriel, and the two prayers may either be the result of a genetic relationship through borrowing and appropriation or are the result of a shared Judæo-Christian oral prayer repertoire in mediaeval Europe.While the Christian angelic invocation, apart from its (most probably later) use as a bedtime prayer, focuses on death, the Jewish angelic invocation focusses on Divine mystical presence. The conservative development of angelic pictorial representation in mediaeval prayer practices through the early modern period points to the roots of certain 18th and 19th century folk art motifs and themes, and a shared Jewish and Christian heritage behind them
Wendelius teckningar föreställande Esters historia. En kommentar till Bengtsson och Vahlne samt en nytolkning av de så kallade Gripsholmstavlorna
Full text linkTitle: Wendelius’ Drawings Depicting the Story of Esther. A Comment on Bengtsson and Vahlne with a New Interpretation of the so called Gripsholm PaintingsA few drawings at the Royal Library in Stockholm have aroused considerable debate among Swedish art historians (figs. 2, 3, 5, 6 & 7). According to sources contemporary with their production in 1722, they reproduce large paintings kept at Gripsholm castle representing the story of king Erik XIV. Twentieth-century art historians have suggested a number of alternative iconographies, mostly alternative sequences of Swedish history or classical motifs. The drawings have been addressed recently in ICO by Herman Bengtsson and Bo Vahlne. The present article argues that the motifs are from the Book of Esther. The claim is supported by the juxtaposition of two scenes representing a woman before a throne and a triumphal scene (Esther before Ahasuerus & Mordecai’s triumph), the bright yellow dress of the female protagonist (a common symbol for her Jewishness) and her swooning before the throne. Comparisons are made with the Alfta hanging representing Esther (fig. 1) and a painting by Artemisia Gentileschi (fig. 4). The iconography of the drawings is based on Catholic sources, suggesting they were produced in Poland in the 1540s and could have come with Catherine Jagelleonica’s entourage to Åbo and then to Gripsholm in the early 1560s
Medieval Iconography in the Digital Age: Creating a Database of the Cult of Saints in Medieval Sweden and Finland
Full text linkThis article describes Mapping Lived Religion, an ongoing research and digitization project based at Linnaeus University and in collaboration with the University of Gothenburg. The project members are building an open access, online database of objects and texts connected to the cults of saints in medieval Sweden and Finland. The database is connected to a digital map and includes a register of medieval places. As part of its work, the project has enabled the digitization and digital publication of the Iconographic Index, housed by the Swedish National Heritage Board. Additionally, the photographs from The World of Medieval Images have been re-digitized as high-resolution images in collaboration with the Swedish National History Museums. By the end of the project, the database will be a major research and educational resource for those working on and teaching this period. As an open access portal published in both Swedish and English, it will offer data on the cults of saints to anyone with an interest in the field in Sweden, Finland, and internationally
Domestic Abuse and Pet Cruelty
Full text linkCruelty to pets is often a means of control utilised by perpetrators of domestic abuse. Not only does the act itself cause suffering to the victim, but the threat of future harm can also prevent a victim from leaving their abusive home.
Currently, there is no legislation in England and Wales that provides protection for the companion animals of those experiencing domestic abuse.
The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 provided an opportunity to make the much overdue change to the lack of protection afforded to companion animals of victims of domestic abuse, however, it failed to do so.
Without this protection, victims of domestic violence will continue be less likely to leave their violent homes out of concern for the safety of their companion animals. The lack of resources and protection for victims with pets makes the threats of the abuser to harm the pets all the more effective, locking victims and their companion animals in a cycle of abuse
Fur Farming in the UK
Full text linkFur farming became illegal in the UK in 2000. The Fur Farming (Prohibition) Act 2000 (‘the Act’) prohibits the keeping of animals solely or primarily for slaughter for the value of their fur.
Whilst the intention behind the wording was not to exclude otherwise legal practices, it can also be employed to legalise what would otherwise be illegal under the Act.
Recent applications have been submitted to open three intensive rabbit farming facilities in England; where at each, 250 female rabbits will produce upwards of 10,000 rabbits per year. In addition to providing meat, such farming practices also produce rabbit pelts and fur products.
The conditions in which farmed rabbits are kept will be considered, as well as developments in the law relating to the same. 
Lindén, Jan-Ivar: Paradis och modernitet. Om livssynen hos Lars-Ivar Ringbom, Helsingfors 2021
No full textThe Elephant in the Room
Full text linkAccording to the Swedish legislator, animal welfare is an important ethical issue in the country that has deep and broad anchoring in human consciousness. Nevertheless, criticism regarding urgent measures needed to raise the level of legislative protection for animals has been articulated in international comparisons. One of these measures being that Sweden ought to ban the use of all wild animals for entertainment purposes. Correspondingly, when the new Swedish Animal Welfare Act 2018:1192 was incorporated in 2019, the supplementary Animal Welfare Ordinance 2019:66 also followed which now added elephants to a list of 11 other kinds of wild animals prohibited to be displayed at circuses or similar operations. Notably, the new ban did however not prohibit the exhibition of elephants at zoos in Sweden. The reason behind the ban was according to the responsible minister that it was obvious that elephants’ natural behavior could not be satisfied in a circus. The Animal Welfare Act distinctly contains the contingent of natural behavior as a stipulation for a good animal environment. This critical animal law article consequently focuses its analysis to the issue of elephant’s prospects of natural behavior in both the circus as well as in the zoo environment. By utilizing elephants as an example and by comparing these two different institutions of entertainment, a systematic study illustrates an inconsistent use in the application of the legal requirement ‘natural behavior’.
Key words: Animal Law, Animal Protection, Animal Rights, Animal Welfare, Critical Animal Studies, Ethology, Natural Behavior
LABOR. A Statue Group in the Monument to Alexander II in Helsinki
Full text linkThe statue group LABOR that forms part of the monument to Alexander II of Russia, Grand Duke of Finland, in Senate Square in Helsinki (inaugurated 1894) is discussed in the context of labour movement iconography by Fred Andersson in an article in Iconographisk Post 3/4 2020. The proposals of the sculptor Walter Runeberg (1838–1920) for LABOR paired Agriculture, a mature woman harvester, and a youthful Industry with tools and machinery. The latter figure was rejected and replaced by a farmer with an axe to indicate his role as a rural worker felling timber, the raw material of the forestry industries. The harvesting woman and the farmer-logger form a couple, and the arrangement of Agriculture’s garments intimates that she might be pregnant. The surmise is affirmed in sculptor Emil Wikström’s (1864–1942) tympanum frieze on the façade of the House of the Estates (erected in 1902), in which he has placed the farming couple of LABOR, the man turning earth with a spade and his seated wife teaching their small son to read. The tableau can be read as a comment on the contemporary drive for compulsory elementary education in Finland.LABOR and the tympanum frieze, which has as its central figure Alexander I in 1809 giving his ruler’s affirmation to the Estates assembled to swear their pledge of loyalty to the new ruler, are to be understood in the context of Finnish nationalist politics rather than the imagery of the international workers’ movement. The figures of LABOR are, however, indebted to the art of French Realism, which favoured agricultural workers as motifs around the middle of the 19th century and which was linked to socialist movements