scholarly journals Environmental resistance in the Anthropocene

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 1317-1337
Author(s):  
Lynda Collins ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Law ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Human History ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Environmental Resistance ◽  
Indigenous Law ◽  
Legal Thought ◽  
Natural Entities ◽  
Production And Consumption

Scientists describe the current “Anthropocene epoch” as one of profound anthropogenic disruptions in the ecosphere that place humanity at an unacceptable risk. This unprecedented ecological moment in human history is rooted in profoundly unsustainable patterns of production and consumption protected by liberal power structures expressed through law. The exigencies of the Anthropocene call us to expand the subjects of resistance to include future generations of humans, plants, non-human animals, ecosystems and “non-living” natural entities (such as water, air and climatic systems). Since these constituencies cannot resist in a socio-political sense, their representation in current socio-political systems will depend upon “an insurrection of subjugated knowledges” (Foucault 1980, 81) including Indigenous law, pre-modern holistic traditions of Western legal thought, and emerging theories of ecological law. This article will explore these approaches as possible paths forward in the Anthropocene, employing a comparative law perspective that considers relevant jurisprudence and policy developments from around the globe. Los científicos describen la época antropocena actual como una época de profundas perturbaciones antropogénicas en la ecosfera, situando a la humanidad ante un peligro inaceptable. Este momento ecológico hunde sus raíces en modelos insostenibles de producción y consumo, protegidos por estructuras de poder liberales. Las exigencias del Antropoceno nos urgen a incluir entre los sujetos de la resistencia a generaciones futuras de humanos, plantas, animales no humanos, ecosistemas y entes “no vivos” (como el agua, el aire y los sistemas climáticos). Como esas entidades no pueden ejercer resistencia en un sentido sociopolítico, su representación dependerá de “una insurrección de conocimientos subyugados” (Foucault 1980, 81), incluyendo leyes indígenas, tradiciones holísticas premodernas de pensamiento jurídico occidental y teorías jurídicas ecológicas emergentes. Este artículo examina tales enfoques, utilizando una perspectiva jurídica comparativa que toma en consideración jurisprudencia relevante y desarrollos de políticas en todo el mundo.

scholarly journals Engaging Foreign Law: Not So Liberally

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (75) ◽  
pp. 11-19
Author(s):  
Pierre Legrand
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Local Knowledge ◽  
Comparative Law ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal Thought ◽  
Foreign Law ◽  
Georgetown University ◽  
The Way

Taking its cue from a remarkable institutional initiative owing to the Georgetown University Law Center, this essay contests some of the key assumptions that have informed liberalism’s cosmopolitan turn. In particular, the argument addresses the way in which liberal legal thought has handled a doctrine widely known as “the rule of law”. The text challenges the universalizing drive having informed the dissemination of “the rule of law” and the attendant marginalization of culture in the form of the decredibilization of local knowledge. The paper suggests that “comparative law” can offer a valuable opportunity for the liberal self to revisit its uniformizing ideological commitments  — although not “comparative law” of the mainstream brand.

scholarly journals Human Beings after Catastrophe: Poetical Portraits by Primo Levi and Tamiki Hara

2021 ◽  
pp. 99-120
Author(s):  
Veronica De Pieri
Keyword(s):  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Traumatic Experiences ◽  
Traumatic Memory ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human History ◽  
Primo Levi ◽  
Red Army ◽  
Bear Witness ◽  
Submission Date

January 27, 1945: the Red Army set Auschwitz concentration camp free, making this date the liberation day for thousands of inmates, victims of the Nazi’s idea of a master race. August 15, 1945: Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of Japan on Japanese radio after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. XX century witnessed two of the most abominable atrocities of human history whose repercussions still affect not only German and Japanese societies, involved at first place, but also each individual’s consciousness too. Over the past decades different studies have been investigating these indelible marks on history on many levels: historical, political, sociological, psychological and even artistic approaches were called into question in the search for the truth about Shoah and atomic bombing catastrophes. This study offers a different perspective on the topic by comparing the poetical responses of two representatives of the so-called Shoah Literature and Atomic Bombing Literature: Primo Levi and Tamiki Hara. Both authors, although the space-related distance and the different nature of the traumatic experiences they witnessed, gave birth to similar poetical responses under the title of Se questo è un uomo (“If this is a man”) and Kore ga ningen na no desu (“This is a human being”).This research sets itself the ambitious goal to demonstrate how, regardless of territorial, cultural and stylistic boundaries, a similar human response toward catastrophe can be detached in the literary productions of Levi and Hara: a comparison on stylistic, figurative and expressive level reveals the analogous literary solutions adopted by the authors to depict human’s frailty in front of trauma. Both authors answer the literary imperative of writing: their commitment unveils the aim to bear witness and to convey memory to the future generations. Words, enriched by authors of allusive and critical meanings, represent an effective and necessary means to keep alive and to preserve the traumatic memory. The literature of the catastrophe, then, becomes a language that unites, rather than divides, different societies. It serves as an universal mouthpiece for victims’ experiences to prevent Auschwitz, Hiroshima and Nagasaki to happen again. Submission date: September 2017.

scholarly journals Learning How to Manage a Planet

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Christian
Keyword(s):  
Turning Point ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Human History ◽  
Next Generation ◽  
Modern Education ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Entire Planet ◽  
Big History

We live at a turning point in the history of planet earth, and we need to understand what is going on. Suddenly, we humans are becoming so powerful that what we do in the next few decades will shape the future of our planet. Unfortunately, most modern education is too narrow to help us see how our relationship with the planet is changing. To see that, and to understand the huge challenges we face, we need to understand the history of planet earth and how human history fits into the planet’s history. This is the story that is told in what are called big history courses. The task for the next generation is nothing less than to learn to manage an entire planet, and to manage it well for the sake of future generations. We have the resources we need, if only we can see the challenge clearly enough and agree on what needs to be done.

Development of Comparative Law in France

2019 ◽  
pp. 28-53
Author(s):  
Bénédicte Fauvarque-Cosson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Comparative Law ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
The Third ◽  
Legal Thought ◽  
The Law

France has a long and solid tradition of comparative law. This article traces the discipline’s development in France, describing its strengths and weaknesses. As universal a science as it is, comparative law has distinctive features in each country. While there is currently no such thing as French or Italian comparative law in the sense that there is French or Italian contracts law, there is an identifiable French style in comparative law that is closely related to the development of French legal thought in general. The never-ending question of the purpose of comparative law emerges as one of the fundamental jurisprudential debates of the twentieth century. The first section of this article details the historical rise of comparative law in France. The second section chronicles its decline. The third section predicts its renaissance, provided French scholars, practitioners, and judges give the study of comparative law the regard it is due, in the light of the internationalization and Europeanization of the law.

scholarly journals (En)gendering Shoreline Law: Nishnaabeg Relational Politics Along the Trent Severn Waterway

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 16-32
Author(s):  
Madeline Whetung
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Lake Ontario ◽  
Multiple Relationships ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Canal System ◽  
Georgian Bay ◽  
Legal Thought ◽  
Shared Space

This article examines the colonization of Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg territory by the Trent Severn Waterway. By examining legal bracketing as a process within Canadian common law alongside prevailing Nishnaabeg philosophy and legal thought, I consider how the construction of a canal system connecting Lake Ontario to Georgian Bay disrupted practices integral to Nishnaabeg law. I offer up the concept of shoreline law as a way to understand particular place-based relationships that Mississaugas hold with water and land and other beings with which they share territory. In particular, I show how colonial domination of Nishnaabeg territory resulted in a gendered dispossession of land that continues to have reverberations throughout Nishnaabeg political systems today. Shoreline law offers up a way to rethink international relations by showing the importance of multiple relationships within the shared space of the shoreline.

Conclusion

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
International Development ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Diverse Populations ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Late Style ◽  
Theodor Adorno ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
The World ◽  
Enterprise Innovation

The book closes with reflections on the concept of style. Piracy is disparaged as the mere reproduction of something that has already been done, but the ethnography of knock-off fashion in Guatemala demonstrates that copying is part of the dialectical movement of style out of which something “new” is created. The chapter discuss the temporality of style and its relationship to race and indigeneity, tradition and modernity in Guatemala, taking a cue from Edward Said’s writings on “late style” (a concept that Said borrowed from Theodor Adorno). Maya participation in the fashion system is a dynamic engagement with globalized material culture, and this reality challenges the notion that indigenous people are defined by the past. That the criminalized, moralized, and politicized category of “pirate” gets attached to their regional industry (and to the production and consumption activities of many other groups around the world) reflects historically rooted power structures and a gap between international development frameworks that promote indigenous and ethnic entrepreneurship and legal regimes that criminalize actual forms of enterprise, innovation, and business. Apprehending this contradiction and understanding its foundations are central to ongoing debates over law, fashion, and the place of diverse populations in the global economy.

scholarly journals Treasure in the vault: The guardianship of ‘heritage’ seeds, fruit and vegetables

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 627-642 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abigail Wincott
Keyword(s):  
Crop Diversity ◽  
Fruit And Vegetables ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Food Plants ◽  
Great Range ◽  
Common Heritage ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Common Heritage Of Humankind

Crop heritage is a growing global phenomenon whereby people conceive of change to agriculture in terms of loss, issuing calls to safeguard what remains for future generations. This article seeks to understand what it means to think about food and the politics of its production and consumption through the frame of ‘heritage’ by interrogating a prevalent metaphor of plants and seeds as ‘treasure’. It argues the metaphor is more than decorative; it is strategic in producing certain conceptualizations of heritage value. While crop diversity is held to be important, and the great range of food plants a ‘common heritage of humankind’, the treasure metaphor is used in ways that impede the maintenance of that diversity, establishing seeds, plants and genes as precious materials best looked after by expert guardians in secure ‘vaults’, ‘banks’ and walled gardens. Thus this particular conception of ‘treasure’ as a universal good actually plays an important role in legitimizing and normalizing the privatization of crops heritage resources.

Measuring the Concentration of Power in Political Systems

1968 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 461-475 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven J. Brams
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Unequal Distribution ◽  
Distribution Of Power

The unequal distribution of power among the members of a political system is one of the most pervasive facts of political life. Yet, while many studies have confirmed the fact that a few members exercise disproportionate control over many others in most systems, the configurations of power relations that occur among the few have generally not been subjected to systematic comparative analysis. In a few notable empirical studies, attempts have been made to compare the exercise of power in different issue-areas and across different decisions. Comparative analyses have suffered, however, from the lack of any means to make tractable and compare, except in a qualitative way, schematic representations of power relations either in different political systems or over different issue-areas in the same system. When diagrams of power structures become complex and unwieldy, it is easiest to forget about making precise comparisons about the way power is distributed among decision-makers somehow identified as being influential in the political process.

The Organisation of the Anthropocene

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge E. Viñuales
Keyword(s):  
Social Organisation ◽  
Social Implications ◽  
Human History ◽  
Negative Externalities ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Core ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Technological Transition ◽  
Organization Of Production

AbstractThis essay introduces the legal dimensions of the Anthropocene, i.e. the currently advocated new geological epoch in which humans are the defining force. It explores in this context two basic propositions. First, law as a technology of social organisation has been neglected in the otherwise highly technology-focused accounts by natural and social scientists of the drivers of the Anthropocene. Secondly, in those rare instances where law has been discussed, there is a tendency to assume that the role of law is to tackle the negative externalities of transactions (e.g. their environmental or social implications) rather than the core of the underlying transactions, i.e. the organization of production and consumption processes. Such focus on externalities fails to unveil the role of law in prompting, sustaining and potentially managing the processes that have led to the Anthropocene. After a brief introduction to the Anthropocene narrative and the possible role of law in it, it focuses on three main questions: the disconnection between natural and human history, the profound inequalities within the human variable driving the Anthropocene, and the technological transition required to reach a sustainable societal organisation.

Immunitet parlamentarny we współczesnym świecie – ujęcie prawnoporównawcze

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 57-74
Author(s):  
Andrzej Jackiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Law ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Expectations ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Current Form ◽  
Degree Of Protection

The purpose of the article is to determine the current form of parliamentary immunity in various countries. The author uses the comparative-law method to analyse constitutions that represent the most common solutions, taking into account the geographic criterion, used in countries located on different continents and having different legal cultures. The author analyses the subjective scope of non-accountability and non-violability and focuses on the time and place in which the protection is provided, and trace the objective scope of the protection and the solutions related to the possibility to lift the parliamentary immunities. The analysis leads to the conclusion that non-accountability is similar in different countries, has undergone few modifications over the years, and it is permanently formed. In the case of non-violability, there are more extensive differences, in particular in the objective scope and the degree of protection. However, various solutions prove that there is not a single universally accepted model of immunity and that the scope of the guaranteed protection can be more diverse, it can be subject to change, and be adapted to the changes in political systems and the political and social expectations.

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