Post‐human lawscapes of Indigenous community forests in Central India

Abstract

The increasing interest in post‐human legal geographies is evident in the Anthropocene, but the agency of place calls for more attention in the discussion. This post‐humanistic study explores the production of lawscape – the bringing together of multiple forms of law and place – in three Indigenous (Adivasi) communities in Central India. According to the interviews and observation conducted in these remote villages, the lawscape of the community forest emerges in encounters between humans and non‐humans, which intertwine with assemblages of formal law. In these community forests, law and place constitute each other in multiple ways. The customs, norms, and relations of the lawscape are not only relationships among people with respect to the land, forest, and resources, but among the whole more‐than‐human community, including the forest itself, with respect to its constituents. The territories and their (external and internal) boundaries are defined through bodily and material practices and in the interaction between different actors. The community forest extends as far as the residents are able to actively protect the forest. The degree of exclusion of the boundaries depends on how actors from outside the villages are perceived to treat non‐humans in the forest, and for what purposes. Inside the boundaries of the community forest there are small patches that have their particular functions and rules: a variety of places for humans and non‐humans. Inside the community forest assemblage, movement, encounters, and materiality constitute these subtle lawscapes, with their particular norms.

Place in legal geography: Agency and application in agriculture research

“…This normative imperative is key for the axiological dimension also (Larsen & Harrington, 2021), including for emplaced and geoethical human‐nature relationships and responsibilities that are material, spiritual, legal, and plural (Bartel & Carter, 2021b; Howitt, 2022; Raven et al, 2021). Against claims of various legal discourses that law is based on transcendental truth, universal economic necessity, and enduring cultural origin (Boulot & Sterlin, 2022; Graham, 2011), legal geography foregrounds the significance of material particularities, especially of place, to the creation, operation, and effect of law (Bartel et al, 2013; Loivaranta, 2020; see also RiverOfLife et al, 2020; Wooltorton et al, 2022). Law itself is co‐constitutive, as Orzeck and Hae (2020, p. 839) have observed: “The idea of law and space as mutually imbricated … Is perhaps the most important axiom in the field of legal geography.” Law is plural too, and place itself possesses and exerts a legal influence through place laws (Bartel, 2018).…”

“…Despite the growing international literature in legal geography (Bartel & Carter, 2021a; Braverman et al, 2014; O’Donnell et al, 2020), there is still little published research informed by, or indeed about conducting, research sensitive to these aspects (exceptions include Bartel, 2017; Loivaranta, 2020; RiverOfLife et al, 2020; Boulot & Sterlin, 2022; see also Davies, 2022; Raven et al, 2021; Schweitzer, 2021). Explicitly place‐directed or focused research demands greater material engagement and reflexivity between people and place, including in the research encounter (Bartel, 2017; Plumwood, 2009).…”

“…As Bartel has argued (2018), participatory methodologies are key and, alongside work to decentre the human as a generalised figure, researchers must also be decentred (Wilcock et al, 2013), which emphasises a responsibility to listen to place and appreciate (inter‐)agency (Cullinan, 2002; Klenck, 2008; Rose, 2007; Suchet‐Pearson et al, 2013; also, Mouritz & Breedon, 2022; Wooltorton et al, 2022). Places can speak through people shaped by those places (Bartel et al, 2013; Gunningham, 2009; Norton, 2000; see also Loivaranta, 2020) and be listened to actively (Carbaugh, 2007; Howitt, 2020), and respectfully, as teachers (Haig‐Brown & Dannenmann, 2002; Larsen & Johnson, 2016), law‐makers (see Bartel, 2018), and co‐researchers and co‐authors (Bawaka Country et al, 2015, 2016; Dowling et al, 2017; RiverOfLife et al, 2020; Wooltorton et al, 2022).…”

Of kin and system: Rights of nature and the UN search for Earth jurisprudence

“…No consensus exists in this burgeoning literature, but key contours are clear. First, Earth jurisprudence is a deeply spatial project as Indigenous legal geographies require land, territories, and relations sufficient for both humans and non‐humans to discharge their respective obligations, such as in the cases of Whanganui River in New Zealand and forest constituencies in India (Charpleix, 2018; Loivaranta, 2020). Second, as Garver (2021) argues, Earth jurisprudence must be premised on findings of Earth system science regarding climate thresholds and other planetary boundaries (see Steffen et al, 2018).…”

Insights from Antipodean legal geography: Building an environmental legal geography scholarship

“…Accordingly, we include the work of scholars based in Australia and New Zealand but who work outside these countries. Here it is important to acknowledge a very full and rich scholarship that similarly extends legal geography’s locational focus has also emerged from, and about other regions (see for recent examples, Campero and Harris, 2019; Feng and Li, 2019; Fladvad et al, 2020; Flores Fernandez and Alba, 2023; Garcia, 2022; Kelly, 2021; Loivaranta, 2020; Nicolas-Artero, 2022; Ramirez Suarez, 2023). We do not review this material here, however, but recognise that this cognate scholarship also marks an important contribution to the evolution of legal geography.…”