Yogi Hendlin

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Assistant) at Erasmus University Rotterdam

The sudden extreme rise in energy prices across Europe and elsewhere due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, has made apparent that even in affluent countries like the Netherlands, energy poverty-which comprises the combination of low income, high energy bills, and a home of high energy loss through inadequate insulation-poses a serious threat to n...

The move from outright denialism by the fossil fuel and related industries to ‘soft denial’ urges reassessing the mechanisms and networks of actors involved in anti-environmentalism. One high-level tactic which harnesses evolutionary psychology and organizational self-protective tendencies to willfully overlook negative outcomes involves compartmen...

This article examines victimization caused by corporate environmental crime related to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) pollution. The system-atic qualitative literature review and thematic synthesis of 27 studies from the USA, Australia, Italy, Sweden, and the United Kingdom aimed to identify critical areas of concern by analyzing the ex...

Recently, the relationship between evolutionary ecology and perceptual science has received renewed attention under perception-mediated selection, a mode of natural selection linking perceptual saliency, rather than veridicality, to fitness. The Interface Theory of Perception (ITP) has been especially prominent in claiming that an organism’s percep...

This introduction to a special issue discusses the ethics of carbon taxes and their importance for Latin America.

Transformative research is a broad and loosely connected family of research disciplines and approaches, with the explicit normative ambition to fundamentally question the status quo, change the dominant structures, and support just sustainability transitions by working collaboratively with society. When engaging in such science-practice collaborati...

Hondenkar met verse groenten, en mensen die een schuit slepen langs een kanaal, jaren 1800. Handgekleurde houtsnede van een 19e-eeuwse illustratie. Mierikswortel, paardenbloemen, rozenbottels; schorseneer, aardaker, paarse morgenster. Misschien niet uw idee voor het diner vanavond. Maar voor uw Nederlandse voorouders was dat honderden, zo niet duiz...

This review admires Michael Marder’s inquiry as a parallel for which biosemiotics can find points of conceptual resonance, even as methodological differences remain. By looking at the dump of ungrounded semiosis – the semiotics of dislocating referents from objects, and its effects – we can better do the work of applying biosemiotics not just towar...

A groundbreaking, multidisciplinary collection that rethinks our present moment and anticipates the key concepts that will shape and direct the twenty-first century. Contemporanea is a nascent lexicon for the twenty-first century edited by seasoned philosophers and authors Michael Marder and Giovanbattista Tusa. The collection showcases perspective...

Context Declining smoking prevalence and denormalisation of tobacco in developed countries reduced transnational tobacco company (TTC) profit during 1990s and 2000s. As these companies faced increasingly restrictive policies and lawsuits, they planned to shift their business to socially acceptable reduced-harm products. We describe the internal mot...

This chapter describes interspecies agency, the fact that all action is co-constructed. Humans as superorganisms are constrained and enabled in our actions by the nonhuman symbionts that compose us. Focusing on the interspecies biosemiotics of human action, rather than (only) complicating our understanding of agency, to acknowledge and trace back t...

The "Age of Separation" is the moniker Charles Eisenstein (2007) assigns to our current era. This isn't just the separation between humans and nature, consciousness from body, subject from object, or any other simple, if severe, break that structures our life. The polycrisis we find ourselves in is instead fractal, where separation has no beginning...

The sudden extreme rise in energy prices across Europe and elsewhere due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine has made apparent that even in affluent countries like the Netherlands, energy poverty, which comprises the combination of low income, high energy bills, and a home of poor energetic quality, poses a serious threat to numerous people’s livabi...

Human music and language are two systems of communication and expression that, while historically considered to overlap, have become increasingly divergent in their approach and study. Music and language almost certainly co-evolved and emerged from the same semiotic field, and this relationship as well as co-origin are actively researched and debat...

The field of public health focuses on how health is not merely an internal affair, from the skin-in, but is a socially and environmentally determined phenomenon. Biosemiotic analysis of the organism-Umwelt relationship, and interactions between exosemiotics and endosemiotics, affords a unique perspective on how given chemicals and other toxins affe...

Approaches to Biosemiotics is the first issue in the Biosocial World collection, and contains a series of articles on what biosemiotics does, how it does it and what its long-term objectives may be. As a more specialized discipline in the boundaries of linguistics, the biosociology, the philosophy of biology and the sciences, we hope to offer a poi...

Microalgae in the wild often form consortia with other species promoting their own health and resource foraging opportunities. The recent application of microalgae cultivation and deployment in commercial photobioreactors (PBR) so far has focussed on single species of algae, resulting in multi-species consortia being largely unexplored. Reviewing t...

The object‐oriented ontology group of philosophies, and certain strands of posthumanism, overlook important ethical and biological differences, which make a difference. These allied intellectual movements, which have at times found broad popular appeal, attempt to weird life as a rebellion to the forced melting of lifeforms through the artefacts of...

Synthetic biology is often seen as the engineering turn in biology. Philosophically speaking, entities created by synthetic biology, from synthetic cells to xenobots, challenge the ontological divide between the organic and inorganic, as well as between the natural and the artificial. Entities such as synthetic cells can be seen as hybrid or transi...

Introduction: Tobacco harm reduction (THR) discourse has been divisive for the tobacco control community, partially because it sometimes aligns public health and tobacco industry interests. Industry funding is contentious as it influences study outcomes, and is not always disclosed in scientific publications. This study examines the role of disclo...

Human music and language are two systems of communication and expression that, while historically considered to overlap, have become increasingly divergent in their approach and study. Music and language almost certainly co-evolved and emerged from the same semiotic field, and this relationship as well as co-origin are actively researched and debat...

The COVID-19 pandemic has proven that extraordinary public health measures can pivot every aspect of society. Norms, politics, economics, and business practices rapidly responded to coordinated simultaneous policies worldwide. This begs the question of why such advancements have not yet been similarly executed to reduce the short- and long-term mor...

Planned obsolescence is the practice of deliberately designing products to limit their life span to encourage replacement. It is a common business strategy for consumer goods, with far-reaching ecological and social consequences. Here, we examine the definition, causes and consequences of planned obsolescence by using insights from corporate crime...

Tobacco, nicotine and related products have and continue to change rapidly, creating new challenges for policies regulating their advertising, promotion, sponsorship and sales. This paper reviews recent commercial product offerings and the regulatory challenges associated with them. This includes electronic nicotine delivery systems, electronic non...

For decades, corporate undermining of scientific consensus has eroded the scientific process worldwide. Guardrails for protecting science-informed processes, from peer review to regulatory decision making, have suffered sustained attacks, damaging public trust in the scientific enterprise and its aim to serve the public good. Government efforts to...

Background In both Sweden and the USA, smokeless tobacco (ST) is legal and used predominantly by men. Starting in the 1970s, US tobacco companies attempted to expand the ST market to women, African Americans, Hispanic Americans and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and other sexual orientation (LGBTQ+) people. Design We analysed industry...

Colony collapse disorder—the dominant term describing massive global bee die-offs—has garnered significant international attention and regulatory intervention. While dominant responses to anthropogenically imperiled bees can be interpreted as economic or narrow self-interested, the global response arising from a spiritual register is less discussed...

Faced with the non-optional acceptance of toxic chemical artifacts, the ubiquitous interweaving of chemicals in our social fabric oft en exists out of sight and out of mind. Yet, for many, toxic exposures signal life-changing or life-ending events, phantom threats that fail to appear as such until they become too late to mitigate. Assessments of to...

The topics of food and medicine have been mobilized for ages by semioticians in order to conduct their studies of sign processes and sign relations. The objective of this book is to examine the manner in which contemporary biosemiotics can help us reconsider food and medicine. Some chapters present more theoretical considerations (on advertising, c...

Foods first encounter the microorganisms in our mouths, stomachs, and guts, which influence our nutritional processing. The digested and absorbed nutrients are circulated throughout the entire body via the blood stream. The circulatory system not only transports biomolecules or metabolites produced by foods, but also serves as a conduit for cellula...

The identification of human agency with our desires often comes at the price of overlooking the entourage of agents that draw us to our moods, feelings, thoughts, and behavior. This essay attends to the interactions between our symbionts – mutualistic, commensal, and parasitic – that through their secretions, create microbiome ecologies prone to re...

Denis Noble convincingly describes the artifacts of theory building in the Modern Synthesis as having been surpassed by the available evidence, indicating more active and less gene-centric evolutionary processes than previously thought. We diagnosis the failure of theory holders to dutifully update their beliefs according to new findings as a micro...

The unprecedented World Health Organization orchestrated lockdown and public health measures in response to the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic were enacted by virtually every government worldwide. In many countries, but especially the United States, long-standing political animosities congealed into a discourse of dehumanization between liberal estab...

Plant biologists widely accept plants demonstrate capacities for intelligence. However, they disagree over the interpretive, ethical and nomenclatural questions arising from these findings: how to frame the issue and how to signify the implications. Through the trope of ‘plant neurobiology’ describing plant root systems as analogous to animal brain...

This edited volume provides a biosemiotic analysis of the ecological relationship between food and medicine. Drawing on the origins of semiotics in medicine, this collection proposes innovative ways of considering aliments and treatments. Considering the ever-evolving character of our understanding of meaning-making in biology, and considering the...

Introduction to the Symposium on the Science and Politics of Glyphosate - Volume 11 Issue 3 - Alessandra ARCURI, Yogi Hale HENDLIN

Since the International Agency on Cancer Research’s monograph found glyphosate to be a likely carcinogen, the regulatory focus on the chemical has centred on this determinative criterion for regulatory action. Yet, other pertinent factors, such as the effects of glyphosate on fresh and ground water and ensuing effects on biodiversity, have received...

Objective To assess whether an association exists between financial links to the indoor tanning industry and conclusions of indoor tanning literature. Design Systematic review. Data sources PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science, up to 15 February 2019. Study selection criteria Articles discussing indoor tanning and health were eligible for inclusio...

Background. Tobacco companies have actively promoted the substitution of cigarettes with purportedly safer tobacco products (e.g., smokeless tobacco, e-cigarettes) as tobacco harm reduction (THR). Given the tobacco, e-cigarette, and pharmaceutical industries’ substantial financial interests, we quantified industry influence on support for THR. Obje...

Mimicry is common among animals, plants, and other kingdoms of life. Humans in late capitalism, however, have devised an unique method of mimicking the signs that trigger evolutionarily-programmed instincts of their own species in order to manipulate them. Marketing and advertising are the most pervasive and sophisticated forms of known human mimic...

Growing research and public awareness of the environmental impacts of tobacco present an opportunity for environmental science and public health to work together. Various United Nations agencies share interests in mitigating the environmental costs of tobacco. Since 2000, transnational tobacco industry consolidation has accelerated, spotlighting th...

Obituary for the American philosopher and semiotician John Deely (1942–2017).

Die Biosemiotik postuliert, dass die Signalgebung zwischen Organismen einen komplexen Prozess darstellt, der sich oft gleichzeitig auf vielfältigen Kanälen abspielt. So vermitteln beispielsweise olfaktorische pheromonische Hinweise, auditive Vokalisationen sowie visuelle Bewegungen und Muster allesamt wichtige Einzelelemente einer beabsichtigten od...

This article explores the need to recognise and compensate the plurality of environmental justice claims, while paying close attention to the outcomes of the most marginalised groups – cultural and ecological – in political decision-making to avoid vestiges of hegemony. The early history of the Movimiento dos Trabalhadores Rurais sem Terra (MST) se...

Background Tobacco addiction is a complex, multicomponent phenomenon stemming from nicotine’s pharmacology and the user’s biology, psychology, sociology, and environment. After decades of public denial, the tobacco industry now agrees with public health authorities that nicotine is addictive. In 2000, Philip Morris became the first major tobacco co...

Background Tobacco Harm Reduction (THR) has become synonymous with substituting alternative tobacco products for cigarettes. However, there exists much dissension among tobacco control professionals regarding accepting harm reduction methods prolonging nicotine addiction and profiting the tobacco, e-cigarette and pharmaceutical industries. We evalu...

The conviviality of sharing habitat can lead species to learn and benefit from other species’ signals, even if those communications are not intended for them. Purposeful interspecific signaling is also common. Forms of symbiotic semiosis, intentional and unintentional, result from repeated interactions between cohabitating species. Attunement to ne...

Background Since 2006, “snus” smokeless tobacco has been sold in the U.S.. However, U.S. Smokeless Tobacco (USST) and Swedish Match developed and marketed pouched moist snuff tobacco (MST) since 1973. Methods Analysis of previously secret tobacco documents, advertisements and trade press. ResultsUSST partnered with Swedish Match, forming United Sca...

Tobacco use is now a well-documented threat to global health. It kills more than 7 million people a year and is currently the world’s single biggest cause of preventable death. Much of what is known about the risks of tobacco, however, concerns the direct impact (in terms of morbidity and mortality) of first-hand and second-hand smoke on people’s h...

This article interprets Jakob von Uexküll’s understanding of different beings’ Innenwelt, Gegenwelt, and umwelt through Deleuzian insights of multiplicity, context, and particularity. This Deleuzian interpolation into Uexküll’s insights acknowledges the absence of a unitary ‘human’ view of nature, recognizing instead that plural viewpoints of cultu...

This article interprets Jakob von Uexkull's understanding of different beings' Innenwelt, Gegenwelt, and umwelt through Deleuzian insights of multiplicity, context, and particularity. This Deleuzian interpolation into Uexkull's insights acknowledges the absence of a unitary 'human' view of nature, recognizing instead that plural viewpoints of cultu...

Environmental ethicists typically consider Jürgen Habermas's theory of communicative action to exclude moral consideration for nonhuman animals. Habermas's early work indeed limits relationships with nature to instrumental ones. Yet, interspersed throughout Habermas's writings are clear indications that nonhuman life deserves moral consideration, a...

Der Begriff der Tiefenökologie (Deep Ecology) wurde ursprünglich von dem norwegischen Philosophen Arne Naess geprägt und dann von George Sessions, Bill Devall, Warwick Fox, Dave Foreman, Gary Snyder und Joanna Macy konzeptionell fortgeführt und erweitert. Die Tiefenökologie ist eine geistige Strömung, die dem physiozentrischen Spektrum der Umweltet...

It is common practice in intergenerational justice to set fixed thresholds determining what qualifies as justice. Static definitions of how much and what to save for future generations, however, overestimate human epistemological limits and predictive capacity in regard to uncertainty in social- and ecosystems. Long-term predictions cannot account...

Florida's Tobacco Pilot Program (TPP; 1998-2003), with its edgy Truth media campaign, achieved unprecedented youth smoking reductions and became a model for tobacco control programming. In 2006, 3 years after the TPP was defunded, public health groups restored funding for tobacco control programming by convincing Florida voters to amend their const...

· From the 1970s through 2011, tobacco control advocacy in Florida was led by the local divisions of the American Cancer Society, American Lung Association, and American Heart Association (tri-agencies), with the American Cancer Society as the dominant player. · The tobacco industry used an extensive group of allies, campaign contributions and...

The aim of the present work was to understand why and how RJ Reynolds and other tobacco companies have marketed tobacco products to young adult social trendsetting consumers (termed 'hipsters') to recruit trendsetters and average consumers to smoke. Analysis of tobacco industry documents and industry marketing materials. Since 1995, RJ Reynolds dev...

When environmental structures break down, new (self-)governance structures emerge from the pending chaos as a necessity. Self-organization occurs as traditionally relied upon structures fail to provide the security, goods, and services necessary to fulfill basic needs. Local organization emerges from immediate survival needs as individual ceases to...

The paradoxes of environmental politics abound: The persistence of antiquated highly-polluting technologies when less harmful alternatives exist attests to the power and stubbornness of industrial hegemons, barriers to accepting new technologies, and a fundamental antagonism against the free-market of ideas. Brazil’s President Lula proclaiming “the...

To describe how the tobacco and gaming industries opposed clean indoor air voter initiatives in 2006, we analyzed media records and government and other publicly available documents and conducted interviews with knowledgeable individuals. In an attempt to avoid strict “smoke free” regulations pursued by health groups via voter initiatives in Arizon...

As advertising restrictions increase worldwide, tobacco marketing strategies have increasingly emphasized strategic targets and those that go directly to smokers and under public health's radar screen. In addition, for some products the target audience is changing. Public health professionals must recognize and understand the ways in which targeted...

• Tobacco control in Arizona flourished from 1997-2007, thanks to public support at the ballot box and the hard work of Arizonan tobacco control activists. • Arizona's state-run Tobacco Education and Prevention Program (TEPP), created by Proposition 200 in 1994 from 23% of a 40 cent tobacco tax increase, provided a key component in Arizona toba...