Presentation short abstract

Rights evolve through social struggles, allowing actors who mobilize them to move beyond their original ontological premises. Yet framing an environmental issue through rights only shifts the language, and sometimes the arenas, of conflict, without resolving its underlying political stakes.

Presentation long abstract

In this contribution, I seek to move beyond two dominant scholarly engagements with rights in ecological contexts: ontological critiques and post-political perspectives.

First, longstanding critiques of rights in environmental theory highlight their individualistic, Eurocentric, and anthropocentric foundations. On this view, rights presume a liberal subject endowed with legal prerogatives to dominate an externalized, inert nature. Such critiques, however, overlook both the diversity of ways rights are mobilized and the malleability of rights frameworks, particularly their capacity to be reshaped through contestation, including ecological struggles. A sociological understanding of rights thus opens space for ecological movements to appropriate and transform rights discourse.

Second, advocates of rights-based approaches to environmental action often claim that extending rights to ecological issues offers an effective tool for transformation. Yet this perspective glosses over entrenched rights regimes such as property, housing, and labor rights. The ecological transition is therefore a site of competing rights claims rather than harmonious synergies. The formalism of rights language, which presents rights as interdependent and indivisible, can obscure these underlying political conflicts.

Taken together, these observations suggest that rights are continuously shaped and reshaped by social movements, enabling actors to move beyond their original ontological premises. However, framing an environmental issue through rights merely shifts the language, and sometimes the arenas, of conflict, particularly through judicialization; it does not resolve the political stakes at the heart of ecological struggles.