Rivers, landscapes, whole territories: these are the latest entities environmental activists have fought hard to include in the relentless expansion of rights in our world. But what does it mean for a landscape to have rights? Why would anyone want to create such rights, and to what end? Is it a good idea, and does it come with risks? This book presents the logic behind giving nature rights and discusses the most important cases in which this has happened, ranging from constitutional rights of nature in Ecuador to rights for rivers in New Zealand, Colombia, and India. Mihnea Tanasescu offers clear answers to the thorny questions that the intrusion of nature into law is sure to raise.

Tanasescu examines the rights of nature in terms of its constituent parts. Besides offering a thorough theoretical grounding, the book gives a first detailed overview of the actual cases of rights for nature so far. This is the first comprehensive treatment of the rights of nature to date, both analytically and in terms of actual cases.

Tanasescu examines the rights of nature in terms of its constituent parts. Besides offering a thorough theoretical grounding, the book gives a first detailed overview of the actual cases of rights for nature so far. This is the first comprehensive treatment of the rights of nature to date, both analytically and in terms of actual cases.

Reading the work of Cioran can often be a perplexing experience: the reader is caught between the desire to understand the continuity of the thought and the apparent chaos of the aphorisms themselves. The shattering reaction that they provoke cannot leave one indifferent but rather forces the reader into a position, either going into hiding or accepting the abyss that the text opens. This extended meditation attempts to develop an often lyrical conception of philosophy and thought inspired by Cioran. It serves both as an introduction for the uninitiated and as a different perspective or overview for the one familiar with the thinker's work. It traces the genesis of key concepts in Cioran's thought and argues for a conception of philosophy that is intimately tied to an author's temperament, viscera and blood. The book explores the concepts of obsession, action, temperament, thought, death and lucidity, relying not just on Cioran but also on the essays of Montaigne. This work could be very helpful to the student of philosophy, the professor interested in having an engaging seminar, as well as to anybody looking for a different view of what it is to live and die as a philosopher.

The concept of political representation has expanded beyond the classical relationship between representative and the represented to encompass advocacy, group identities, non-human voices, future generations, non-democratic systems, symbols, virtual representation and broader interests. As such, literature on political representation stems from a wide range of viewpoints and scholarly traditions, with different norms and assumptions built in. This volume aims to map and critique the 'edges' of political representation. By moving from a discussion in the classical electoral literature through feminist perspectives to different levels of representation, different understandings of who is represented and onto empirical studies of symbolic and virtual representation through participation, the contributions in this book provide a nuanced assessment while also presenting future avenues for research that go beyond the mainstream of research on political representation. Taken together, the chapters provide a wide vista of political representation across several sub-disciplines in political science (political theory, political philosophy, party politics, electoral politics, feminism, European politics, minority politics, online governance etc.), and also open up new research avenues through a thorough investigation and critique of political representation in scholarship.