Econormativity

Cf.

bioproportionality
Law
Earth

Definitions

Econormativity explores the intersection of ecological and normative frameworks. It refers to the idea that "nature" produces norms and values, which can influence human behaviour and human-societal norms.

Evolutionary constraints are abundant and unpredictably creative. Cf. "overloading" 1

Tahar, Mathilde. “Biological Constraints as Norms in Evolution.” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 44, no. 1 (2022): 9. https://doi.org/10/gq7nw2.

Issues and Points

Econormativity in application to law imagines that law should become more ecological:

see what works in community and adapting to support it
accept the relationships in nature as normative because they are necessary for survival

Challenges

"what", that is the need to include nonhuman voices is reasonably well established, but the "how" is not

Issues

not clear how to separate nature from non-nature or cruel, wasteful, inadequate patterns in nature from those that are more successful from some subjective standpoints. Cf. extinctions as a routine, competitive pressure as a routine, life loosing whole regions or whole planets.
ecological relationships are not always positive or fair..
the focus on populations and communities can lead to the neglect of individuals
it is easy to prioritize some species or ecosystems over others.
some stakeholders have more power or visibility than others.
normativity that emerges from bottom-up patterns, stabilities, and habits can be inherently conservative. This conservatism can oppress change, innovation, and diversity. Without additional filters and selection mechanisms to exert pressure for improvement, such systems may lack resilience and adaptability.
Emerging critiques of eco-ableism and econormativity highlight issues when applied to humans. 2 It is also important to extend this critique to disabled, damaged, or degraded nonhuman entities. Excluding or deprioritizing them because they are not "normal" or "healthy" is problematic. For example, the disability movement has developed critiques of the unfair normalisation and valuing of health, or - in application to nonhuman beings - perceived "fitness" of ability to "thrive". Cf. Thriving, which itself becomes problematic and in need of multi-perspectival critical analysis. What is "normal" or "desirable" is problematic because the automatic creative of relative value and oppression of the less valued especially because the powerful human are the ones defining the values. Cf. Bias, Human Bias

The politics of normalcy and normativity can reinforce what queer and disability studies recognize as a compulsory social-environmental order, determined by what and who are constructed as normal and natural. Cf. Disability

Environmental history and politics have a track record of mobilizing ideas of the normal to determine which bodies and environments express values of productive work, rugged individualism, masculinity, independence, potency, and moral virtue, the kinds of values that often justify and motivate environmental advocacy. Critical histories reveal the capitalist, patriarchal, colonialist, heteronormative, eugenicist, and ableist backgrounds to this seemingly “progressive” exterior.

De Chiro, Giovanna. “Polluted Politics? Confronting Toxic Discourse, Sex Panic, and Eco-Normativity.” In Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire, edited by Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands and Bruce Erickson, 199–230. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010.

by contrast narratives, discourses and stocks of knowledge that reframe ecological degradation, animal exploitation, manipulation and control over nonhuman lives as normal, where fluid human narratives of convenience, pleasure, and profit define what is normal often in direct and obvious contradiction to the available evidence of harm and suffering.
the role of random events and a broad plurality of factors that can define the outcomes, for example the notion of punctured equilibrium in evolution. Found patterns are messy, constrained, is it reasonably to elevate them to normative status?

"We fault the adaptationist programme for its failure to distinguish current utility from reasons for origin (male tyrannosaurs may have used their diminutive front legs to titillate female partners, but this will not explain why they got so small); for its unwillingness to consider alternatives to adaptive stories; for its reliance upon plausibility alone as a criterion for accepting speculative tales; and for its failure to consider adequately such competing themes as random fixation of alleles, production of non-adaptive structures by developmental correlation with selected features (allometry, pleiotropy, material compensation, mechanically forced correlation), the separability of adaptation and selection, multiple adaptive peaks, and current utility as an epiphenomenon of non-adaptive structures. We support Darwin’s own pluralistic approach to identifying the agents of evolutionary change."

Gould, Stephen J., and Richard C. Lewontin. “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological Sciences 205, no. 1161 (1997): 581–98. https://doi.org/10/fgb62p.

the bias and selfishness of the human perspective can redefine the normal, as for example in the case of mental health. 3
it is not correct that the purpose of living entities is to survive, or not at all levels and in a general/practical sense. For example, what about cannibalism or eating one's babies or sacrificing siblings for other siblings? What about all the intermediate attempts at survival that fail or are expensive or lead to death? The derivation of the desire to survive from the surviving life is too easy when most forms of life are extinct and dead. So life, as in the Gould's "Full House" maybe has a direction that is nameable while at other levels the directions do not unify.
energetically, the carbon life is very common and in that maybe linked to the idea of normativity but other types of life are possible and within carbon life there is a lot of scope for variability, an open scope for innovations, not necessarily successful.
there is a difficulty in the attempt towards a total inclusion, if there is no distinction and all decisions or law are necessarily ecological or technological, why is one law better than another?
what is automation? it is the adjustment of the investment/outcome/risk balance, there are many ways to do that. Automation is a practical strategy among many, cf. instinct, habituation, imprinting, inheritable genetic mechanisms, etc. Automation involves exclusion but it also depends on what is easy to automate. If symbols like in math are automation, they definitely support reflectivity, do not prevent it.

Alternatives and Additions

interspecies solidarity and justice
animal labour and other rights or perspectives

Processes

There is similarity - or methodological equivalency - between approaches in science, law, 4 design, engineering, Indigenous knowledges, etc. We can provisionally call this trial-and-error fitting but many approaches are involved. What are the differences then? Critical mass, reliance of experiments and numbers, accrual of knowledge, so everyday and cumulative rigour, not essential elements.

In Science

The partial and approximate character of scientific knowledge is a consequence of the interconnectedness between phenomena.

“Objects,” “structures,” “processes,” etc. are identifiable locally stable structures of some convenience. Their definitions and identifications have subjective and contextual character.

An "objective" description in science refers to knowledge that is collectively shaped, constrained, and regulated by the scientific community. This intersubjective validation, based on consensus, is a standard practice in science.

In Law

The portrayal of law often suggests it is merely a method of textual interpretation of legal documents, seemingly disconnected from the "laws of nature." However, in practice, law and jurisprudence are complex and creative fields. Interpretation plays a significant role, as does the determination of which legal authority applies (e.g., common law, international treaties). For instance, an interpreter might select a specific custom relevant to the context of a case or invoke a general principle from broad constitutional language, such as fairness, equity, or good faith.

The legal interpreters, like scientists, have discretion in choosing methods. They alternate between deduction and induction until they arrive at a satisfactory solution.

References

Alon, Uri. An Introduction to Systems Biology: Design Principles of Biological Circuits. 2nd ed. 2006. Reprint, Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2020.

Davies, Margaret. Ecolaw: Legality, Life, and the Normativity of Nature. Abingdon: Routledge, 2022. Fischer, Florian. Natural Laws as Dispositions. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018.

Hörl, Erich, and James Burton, eds. General Ecology: The New Ecological Paradigm. London: Bloomsbury, 2017. Maynard Smith, John, and Eörs Szathmáry. The Major Transitions in Evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Aslam, Ali, David Wallace McIvor, and Joel Alden Schlosser. Earthborn Democracy: A Political Theory of Entangled Life. New York: Columbia University Press, 2024.

Nocella, Anthony J., Amber E. George, and J. L. Schatz, eds. The Intersectionality of Critical Animal, Disability, and Environmental Studies: Toward Eco-Ability, Justice, and Liberation. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2017.

Richardson, Michael. Nonhuman Witnessing: War, Data, and Ecology after the End of the World. Durham: Duke University Press, 2024.

Footnotes

Longo, Giuseppe. “How Future Depends on Past and Rare Events in Systems of Life.” Foundations of Science 23, no. 3 (2018): 443–74. https://doi.org/10/g8q6q7.˄
Cram, Emily, Martin P. Law, and Phaedra C. Pezzullo. “Cripping Environmental Communication: A Review of Eco-Ableism, Eco-Normativity, and Climate Justice Futurities.” Environmental Communication 16, no. 7 (2022): 851–63. https://doi.org/10/g8qrgr.˄
Horwitz, Allan V., and Jerome C. Wakefield. The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.˄
Capra, Fritjof, and Ugo Mattei. The Ecology of Law: Toward a Legal System in Tune with Nature and Community. Oakland: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2015.˄

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