Subjects of Nature’s Rights: Resignifiyng Agency, Legal Personhood and Justice Beyond the Human

The growing recognition of the Rights of Nature (RoN) - from rivers and forests to mountains and ecosystems - as legal and political subjects signals a profound shift in the ways societies conceptualize justice, agency, and legal personhood. These shifts challenge dominant conceptions of legal personhood, sovereignty, and agency, traditionally reserved for human actors and institutions. As these frameworks evolve, new forms of relationality, accountability, and justice emerge - often rooted in alternative epistemologies and contested moral economies.From a sociological perspective, this reconfiguration prompts critical questions: Who or what is acknowledged as a bearer of rights in nature? Under what cultural, legal, or political conditions are these claims legitimized, institutionalized, or resisted? How do such recognitions reshape relations between human and more-than-human communities? Importantly, these developments unfold in a broader global context marked by democratic backsliding, rising authoritarianism, and new forms of denialism, where environmental protections and RoN frameworks are often undermined or actively reversed.The recognition of the Rights of Nature (RoN) raises fundamental questions about who or what can be considered a subject of rights, and how legal, political, and social systems respond to this shift. While rivers, forests, and ecosystems have recently been granted legal standing in different parts of the world, the broader sociological implications of these developments remain underexplored. These recognitions challenge deeply rooted ideas about agency, sovereignty, and justice that have traditionally centred on human actors. At the same time, such transformations do not occur in neutral contexts. They unfold amid democratic fragility, extractivist pressures, and new forms of environmental denialism that often seek to weaken or reverse ecological protections. This Research Topic aims to examine how nature becomes constituted as a subject of rights in practice, and how these processes reshape governance, citizenship, and environmental justice. By bringing together empirical and theoretical contributions, it seeks to clarify the social conditions, power dynamics, and knowledge systems that enable—or constrain—the expansion of legal and political agency beyond the human.This Research Topic invites interdisciplinary and empirically grounded contributions that explore the social, cultural, legal, and epistemological processes through which nature is constituted as a subject of rights across diverse contexts. These processes are embedded in ongoing negotiations between worldviews, knowledge systems, and power relations - where Indigenous cosmologies, ecological jurisprudence, feminist political ecology, and post-humanist theory intersect and often contest dominant paradigms.We welcome empirical, theoretical, and methodological contributions on topics such as:• The socio-political construction of more-than-human subjects (e.g. animals, rivers, ecosystems, sacred places)• Tensions, conflicts and synergies between animal rights and Rights of Nature frameworks• The role of law, activism, and social movements in expanding or resisting the boundaries of legal personhood• Legal pluralism and the negotiation between Eurocentric legal orders and other cosmologies• Representations, narratives, and imaginaries that (de)legitimize nature’s agency in public discourse• Activism, social movements, and institutional innovations advancing RoN claims•The role of environmental justice, postcolonial critique, and legal pluralism in advancing more inclusive frameworks;• Territorial struggles, environmental justice, and the redefinition of sovereignty beyond the human• Backlashes, denialism, and authoritarian regimes in the contestation of Nature’s Rights Topic editors: Fátima Alves, Rodrigo Rodrigues De Freitas, Diogo Guedes Vidal, Jeremie Gilbert Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/79263/subjects-of-natures-rights-resignifiyng-agency-legal-personhood-and-justice-beyond-the-human