Intelligibility and the intricacies of knowledge and power in transnational activism for the rights of nature

ABSTRACT

Rights of nature are promoted by transnational activists with various backgrounds. These include legal scholars, environmentalists, and indigenous leaders from the Global North and the Global South. These actors converge in their support for the reconceptualization of nature as a subject with legally enforceable rights. How is this ideational convergence fostered across different actors? What knowledge politics are configured? This article focuses on these questions drawing insights from the Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse. Democracy Schools and Awakening the Dreamer Symposia are studied as special events in which elements of transnational activism for the rights of nature become intelligible to potential adherents. These components are systematically reconstructed to reveal that this collective endeavour is underpinned by an ‘interpretive repertoire’, which stress the need to reform legal systems to extend rights to entities that formerly did not have them; the intrinsic value of the natural components of Earth; the physical limits of the planet; the wisdom and harmony reflected in the relationships of non-western cultures with nature; and human beings’ stewardship role of nature. Such reconstructed discursive foundation is the basis for exploring intricate links between knowledge and power in environmental politics.

KEYWORDS:

• Transnational activism
• rights of nature
• SKAD
• intelligibility
• interpretive repertoire
• knowledge politics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. An example of this is the activities of the UN General Assembly and the UN Secretary-General under the agenda item ‘Harmony with Nature’ since 2010 (see, e.g., A/RES/64/196 2009; A/RES/65/164 2010; A/RES/67/214 2012; A/RES/66/204 2011; Secretary-General 2010, 2011, 2012). Additionally, the GARN organizes workshops, side events and round-table discussions at UN conferences dealing with environmental and sustainability topics.

2. Such as the Kapawi eco-lodge (http://www.pachamama.org/about/origin, accessed 25.03.2015).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cristina Espinosa

Cristina Espinosa works as an assistant professor at the Chair of Sustainability Governance at the Institute of Environmental Social Sciences and Geography at the University of Freiburg. She obtained her PhD on 2015 and was awarded the Erasmus Prize for the Liberal Arts and Sciences from the University College Freiburg for her dissertation ‘Apart from nature or a part of nature? Discourse analyses of the politics of redefining the relationships between humans and nature’. Between 2016 and 2017 she held a senior research position at the Arnold-Bergstraesser-Institute in Freiburg coordinating the cluster ‘Politics of Natural Resources’ and was the regional expert for Latin America. Her research tackles environmental discourses, social movements, and knowledge practices in world politics and Latin America. She deploys critical perspectives anchored in the constructivist and interpretivist paradigms of the social sciences and attempt to disentangle the historical, scientific, social, legal, cultural, and political complexities of the relationship between people and nature. Her current research interests revolve around the expansion of extractive industries such as oil drilling and large-scale mining into areas of biological and cultural significance.