Research Methods in Environmental Law: A Handbook(Handbooks of Research Methods in Law series)

This timely Handbook brings together a collection of innovative interdisciplinary approaches to explore the use of research methods in environmental law. With chapters on topics ranging from sustainability, climate change and activism to education, actor-network theory and non-human ontologies, this Handbook provides a theoretically informed analysis of methodological approaches to this important field. Taking into consideration issues such as non-human agency, the Anthropocene, and spatial and material turns in law this book builds on key concepts in the subject. The book also considers how environmental law must adapt to the new and urgent needs of a variety of bodies, both human and non-human, that require its protection. It argues that traditional ways of conceiving environmental law, and of accounting for problems brought about through anthropocentric means, have led to the reinstatement of the problem of environmental degradation without imagining different avenues to resolve it. This Handbook is a key addition to the existing literature and provides an invaluable contribution to practical critique and to the reimagining of environmental law. It will be a crucial compendium for graduate students and researchers in the field of environmental law wishing to explore critical approaches. Contributors include: R. Bartel, I. Braverman, V. Brooks, P. Burdon, E. Cloatre, L. Finchett-Maddock, J. Gillespie, A. Grear, J. Holder, A. Kotsakis, L. Kotze, B. Lange, D. Mandic, J. Martel, D. McGillivray, K. Morrow, E. Mussawir, U. Natarajan, M. Nikolic, Y. Otomo, J. Paterson, A. Pavoni, A. Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, I.-J. Sand, F. Venter, B. Woodard

Table of Contents:
Contents: PART I: MATERIALITY 1. Foregrounding Vulnerability: Materiality’s Porous Affectability as a Methodological Platform Anna Grear 2. How to Think About ‘Nature-society’ Interactions in Environmental Law ‘in Action’? Betina Lange 3. Abstracting Method: Taking Legal Abstractions Seriously Andrea Pavoni 4. Actor-network Theory and the Empirical Critique of Environmental Law: Unpacking the Bioprospecting Debates Emilie Cloatre 5. Speculative Entropy: Dynamism, Hyperchaos and the Fourth Dimension in Environmental Law Practice Lucy Finchett-Maddock 6. Critical Environmental Law as Method in the Anthropocene Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos PART II: SPATIALITY AND JURISDICTION 7. Place-thinking: The Hidden Geography of Environmental Law Robyn Bartel 8. Bringing Environmental Justice to the Centre of Environmental Law Research: Developing Collective Case Study Methodology Jane Holder and Donald McGillivray 9. Third Word Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) and the Environment Usha Natarajan 10. The Methodology of Environmental Constitutional Comparison Francois Venter and Louis J. Kotzé 11. Engaged Enquiry in Environmental Law: Understanding People/place Connections Through a Geographically Informed Human Rights Lens Josephine Gillespie PART III: ECOLOGY, ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL ACTIVISM 12. Ecofeminist Approaches to the Construction of Knowledge and Coalition Building – Offering a Way Forward for International Environmental Law and Policy Karren Morrow 13. Environmentalism and an Anarchist Research Method Peter Burdon and James Martel 14. On the Relation between Scholarship and Action in Environmental Law: Method, Theory, Change Andreas Kotsakis 15. A Systems Theory Perspective on the Principle of Precaution Employing Critical Discourse Analysis John Paterson 16. Environmental Law In The Age Of The Anthropocene: How To Normatively Communicate On Environmental Change And Risks? Inger Johanne Sand 17. The Nested Eye: Naturalism, Perspectivalism, and Environmental Law Ben Woodard PART IV: MORE-THAN-HUMAN 18. Thinking about Law and the Question of the Animal Edward Mussawir and Yoriko Otomo 19. The Life and Law of Corals: Breathing Meditations Irus Braverman 20. All That Is Air Melts Into City: Minoritarian Apparatuses For A More-Than-Human World Mirko Nikolić 21. Listening to the World: Sounding out the Surroundings of Environmental Law with Michel Serres Danilo Mandic 22. F#cking Research Ethics Through Radical Method: Autoethnography and The Field of Environmental Law Victoria Brooks Index

About the Author :
Edited by Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Professor of Law and Theory, Director of the Westminster Law & Theory Lab and Victoria Brooks, Lecturer in Law, Westminster Law School, University of Westminster, UK

Review :
‘The editors have tackled a difficult subject and are to be applauded for fashioning a volume that will surely stand the test of time as a landmark for environmental law scholars in the years to come.’ ‘The book is a thought-provoking journey of different, often experimental, innovative ideas that stretch the boundaries of environmental law research and scholarship. The volume contributes towards efforts to drive more inter-disciplinary approaches in environmental law, while critically reflecting on theoretical and methodological understandings. The diversity in disciplinary backgrounds of the authors provide a rich array of perspectives. The inter-disciplinary lens of the book is particularly topical. The section on materiality, for example, is very useful for environmental law scholars considering how to incorporate the surge of work on ‘nature-society’ relations in the humanities and social sciences.’ ‘This collection takes a bold step towards re-situating the legal enterprise alongside those bodies whose movement it strives to direct, thereby revitalising the sense of law’s immanence to what has elsewhere been dubbed “the lawscape”, i.e. the entangled continuum of law and bodies.’