Diritti della natura nei nuovi costituzionalismi del Global South: riflessi sulla teoria dei formanti

Rights of Nature in the new constitutionalisms of the Global South: reflections on formant theory

Abstract

In many legal systems of the Global South, the legal personality of natural elements has been recognized by law and jurisprudence. Wanting to explain this phenomenon through the theory of formants, the author encounters some conceptual obstacles, related to the difficulty of defining the concepts of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’. Drawing on the conceptual tools of the anthropology of nature, the article on the one hand questions the use of the expression "cultural formant" with reference to the rights of nature; on the other hand, it argues that a monist reading of the relationship between man and nature should push Western legal thought towards a paradigm shift.