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8 - Who Do We Think We Are?

Human Rights in a Time of Ecological Change

from Part II - Unmaking International Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2022

Usha Natarajan
Affiliation:
Columbia University, New York
Julia Dehm
Affiliation:
La Trobe University, Victoria
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Summary

This chapter explores the relationship between human rights and the environment. It begins by asking ‘who we think we are’ to understand the forms of subjecthood and subjectivity produced by human rights. It argues that human rights normalize a series of false conceptions about our collective self that have detrimental social and ecological consequences. The chapter next examines the question of ‘where we think we are’, probing the ontological rift between humans as subjects of rights and ‘the environment’ as the repository of resources with which to satisfy human entitlements. The chapter challenges human rights as a hubristic organizing category and observes that the ‘who’ and ‘where’ questions, artificially separated in the chapter, serve to show that the way humans treat each other is inextricable from the way we treat nature. To undo relationships of mastery, ownership, and violence between the subjects and objects of human rights law, projects for human wellbeing and environmental struggles need to engage with and understand each other outside the unproductive rubric of rights discourse.

Type
Chapter
Information
Locating Nature
Making and Unmaking International Law
, pp. 200 - 228
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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