UDTR Global Rights of Nature Radar

Responding to anthropocentrism with anthropocentrism: the biopolitics of environmental personhood

Identification

Public canonical key

doi:10.1080/10383441.2022.2037882

Authors

Jade-Ann · Timothy D.

Reported year

2021

Reported language

en · eng

Source type

Article

First detected

2026-11-09T19:04:47.846242+00:00

Last metadata observation

2026-11-09T19:18:28.135541+00:00

Last HTTP verification

Not checked

Institutions reported by the source

Griffith University · University of the Sunshine Coast

Reported affiliation countries

AU

Documentary abstract — original language

This article critically analyses the novelty of the legal personhood of nature and, in particular, whether it signals cracks in the anthropocentrism of Western law. Drawing upon the work of Michel Foucault and Roberto Esposito, it contributes to the theorisation of environmental personhood by focusing on the biopolitical nature of personhood itself. It does so by engaging in a critical examination of the attribution of legal personality to the Whanganui River in Aotearoa New Zealand as the most detailed and sophisticated legislative example to date of legally personifying a natural thing. Working through three key conceptual terms in Foucault’s and Esposito’s work (population, personhood and immunisation), we demonstrate the way in which a biopolitical analysis raises questions about whether ascribing legal personhood to nature addresses anthropocentrism and its effects. We draw attention to the risk of ascribing legal personhood to nature, which is that, instead of signalling an ontological shift in the Western anthropocentric understandings of environment, it operates within and reinforces the dominant legal worldview–unless, that is, the granting of personhood to nature calls into question the dominant paradigm of personhood itself. The article concludes by suggesting alternative ways of developing human understandings of, and relationship with, nature. ; Full Text

Identifiers

DOI

10.1080/10383441.2022.2037882

OPENALEX

W4212960038

HANDLE

10072/418104

OPENAIRE

doi_dedup___::bd7f11a70ed7ad5aff04e11e51991be4

Documentary context

Documentary family

Scholarship

Source-reported types

Article · article

Jurisdictions studied — explicit sources

NZ

Natural entities mentioned

River

Entity mentions are not evidence of legal recognition. Jurisdiction studied is separate from author affiliation country.

Sources

OpenAIRE · Record 1

OpenAlex · Record 1 · Record 2 · Record 3

• DOI · https://doi.org/10.1080/10383441.2022.2037882
• Handle · https://hdl.handle.net/10072/418104
• OpenAlex · https://openalex.org/W4212960038

Documented bibliographic relations

Source-declared references and links; they do not establish legal support or UGLC qualification. Up to 20 outgoing references are displayed.

• openalex:w112684318 · CITES
• openalex:w128978027 · CITES
• openalex:w153439689 · CITES
• openalex:w1542356730 · CITES
• openalex:w1546702915 · CITES
• openalex:w1597750586 · CITES
• openalex:w1603654413 · CITES
• Earth Jurisprudence: The Moral Value of Nature · CITES
• openalex:w2001802528 · CITES
• openalex:w2007179619 · CITES
• openalex:w2010681172 · CITES
• openalex:w2027589686 · CITES
• openalex:w2030085862 · CITES
• openalex:w2038145808 · CITES
• openalex:w2057675048 · CITES
• openalex:w2100766544 · CITES
• openalex:w2109309691 · CITES
• Losing the Forest for the Trees: Environmental Reductionism in the Law · CITES
• openalex:w2115237109 · CITES
• openalex:w2124595442 · CITES

34 incoming references within the detected corpus

Documentary status

Relevance pending

Library

This identity is not yet included in the Legal Library.