ABSTRACT
Extending law beyond the human, the book probes the conceptual openings, methodological challenges and ethical conundrums of law in a time of deep socio-ecological disturbances and transitions.
How do we learn and practice law across epistemic and ontological difference? What sort of methodologies do we need? In what sense does conjuring other-than-human beings as sentient, cognitive and social agents— rather than mere recipients of state-sanctioned rights—transform what we mean by “law” and “rights of nature”? Legal institutions exclusively focused on human perspectives seem insufficiently capable of addressing current socio-ecological challenges in Latin America and beyond. In response, this book strives to integrate other-than-human beings within legal thinking and decision-making protocols. Weaving together various fields of knowledge and world-making practices that include—but are not limited to—Indigenous legal traditions, Earth Law and multispecies ethnography, Law, Humans and Plants focuses on the entanglement of law, ecology and Indigenous cosmologies in Southern Colombia. In so doing, it articulates a general postanthropocentric legal theory which is proposed, a tool to address socioecological challenges such as climate change and bio-cultural loss.
This book will be of interest to scholars and students in the disciplines of environmental law, Earth Law and ecological law, legal theory and critical legal studies as well as others working in the in the fields of Indigenous studies, environmental humanities, legal anthropology and sustainability and climate change justice.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|113 pages
Law and its ontological itineraries
chapter Chapter 1|31 pages
Yoco (Paullinia Yoco)
chapter Chapter 2|18 pages
Yagé (Banisteriopsis caapi)
chapter Chapter 3|24 pages
Coca leaf (Erythroxylaceae coca)
chapter Chapter 4|28 pages
The making of an ethnobotanical research agreement in Southern Colombia
part II|105 pages
On the rights of nature