Biography
Joseph is a third-year PhD student in political science at Duke University. His research interests include political theory, environmental thought, and jurisprudence. He completed his BA in philosophy and political science from the University of California, Berkeley.
Paper Abstract
In 2008, the country of Ecuador updated its constitution and became the first country to recognize rights of nature. Inspired by the indigenous Andean cosmovision of sumak kawsay, the Ecuadorian preamble posits nature as belonging to the nation’s identity and entitled to constitutional protection. These rights have been inspired by the principle of buen vivir, a Spanish translation of the Quechua sumak kawsay. Drawing on indigenous political thought, anticolonial thought, and ecological thought, buen vivir can be thought of as a form of “good living” that envisions distinct, ordered relations between humans and nature. My paper considers the normative implications the rights of nature raise for political membership, specifically through the lens of constitutional design. I argue that the inclusion of nature, or nonhuman life, into a political community can be grounded in an idea I call “passive citizenship.”