Books by Melisa Liana Vazquez
In recent years, there has often been talk of de-secularization. Many have said that modernit... more In recent years, there has often been talk of de-secularization. Many have said that modernity has ushered in an era in which religion is on the way out, on the verge of extinction, and secularism has won out in the game of history. If this were true, a book on 'religious space' would be little more than a niche project. One has to ask, however: can 'religious space' really be considered separate and categorically distinguishable from space in general? European cities have historically been built around a church located next to the seat of government, generating in turn the 'space' of the main public square. In most urban sites, this topographic distribution persists, and Italy constitutes, in this respect, a paradigmatic example. In Italy, conflicts over the use of disused Catholic churches, Muslim communities in need of prayer spaces, interfaith spaces and the related use of urban space as a whole, reflect pressing concerns about how to live in our increasingly plural cities and how to define the boundaries between the freedom of some and the freedom of others. Into this battleground comes law, which regulates space and all the practices that take place within it. 'Liturgy,' understood through its etymological root of ‘action in public space’, serves as a cognitive key that could support law to better qualify the objects and recipients of its regulation. If time and space are impossible to separate, looking back is the only way to fathom the future (and vice versa). Brief historical forays are therefore presented alongside contemporary legal analysis in the hopes of illuminating a path towards a horizon of spatial justice. The volume addresses in three chapters the relationship between sacred and secular space in the city; the theoretical-legal and jurisdictional issues revolving around the problem of the availability of places of worship within urban spaces; and, finally, the historical and methodological conditions for the elaboration of a constitutional 'spatial justice'.
https://romatrepress.uniroma3.it/libro/varieties-of-religious-space-freedom-worship-and-urban-justice/
This book addresses secularism and law from the premise that religion has become the enfant terri... more This book addresses secularism and law from the premise that religion has become the enfant terrible of modernity.This characterization comes from its being mistaken for and reduced to institutional denominations, and the denominational more generally. Instead, this book argues, the religious cannot be extracted from its broader cultural embeddedness; if it has any hope of being understood, it must be analyzed from an anthropological/historical perspective capable of articulating its inevitable entanglement with the secular. Without such an approach, secularization, too, risks misconception and faulty outcomes. Engaging just such a legal-anthropological and historical analysis, the book develops a critical approach to past theories, revealing, through both theory and comparative case studies, the cultural incompleteness of Western processes of secularization. This incompleteness, it is argued, is the true source of a whole host of apparently insurmountable conflicts within contempor...
Papers by Melisa Liana Vazquez
International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique, Dec 19, 2023
Normative Pluralism and Human Rights, 2018
Oxford journal of law and religion/The Oxford journal of law and religion, May 14, 2024
Any determination of the human subject emerges from and represents one of innumerable and distinc... more Any determination of the human subject emerges from and represents one of innumerable and distinct worldviews. All worldviews depend on both holistic and relational conceptions, infused with specificities of language, kinship, and religious/spiritual ties and understandings. This is particularly evident when considering issues of human rights and the environment, another domain in which an interrelational understanding is inescapable. I will argue that an intercultural translation methodology is our best hope for moving beyond stale dichotomies that treat human rights and religions as isolatable oppositional categories and the environment as a reified set of resources meant to fuel relentless post-capitalist drives. Furthermore, learning to translate religious perspectives understood anthropologically can enfranchise a critically important relational understanding of human flourishing. To be gained are invaluable opportunities towards saving human rights from the semantic fog that otherwise obscures any possibility for their fulfilment.
Calumet - intercultural law and humanities review, 2024
Though issues such as climate change, environmental protection and food security are often siloed... more Though issues such as climate change, environmental protection and food security are often siloed in academic and political discussions, this essay moves from the premise that it is not meaningful to treat them as separate categories. Using the recently passed EU "Nature Restoration Law" as a springboard, the argument will be made that the 'restoration' approach to confronting environmental challenges is unsound. More specifically, the law's approach to biodiversity, which includes "the safeguarding of food systems" depends upon a deeply flawed conception of what 'food' is. The essay will instead propose a view of food and environment which sees them as reciprocally transformative and constantly in flux. Neither can be understood as a "thing" since both are "radial" and deeply interconnected. Such a perspective makes evident that other thinking modalities are needed to address the current crises in environmental/food landscapes. A discussion of the potential contribution of religious imaginaries is followed by observations regarding the role of law. Understanding the interrelations between food, environment, law and the cultural imaginaries that tie them together is crucial towards any attempt to "address the humanitarian global food crisis" as the EU claims to do.
Oxford Journal of Law and Religion, 2024
Any determination of the human subject emerges from and represents one of innumerable and distinc... more Any determination of the human subject emerges from and represents one of innumerable and distinct worldviews. All worldviews depend on both holistic and relational conceptions, infused with specificities of language, kinship, and religious/spiritual ties and understandings. This is particularly evident when considering issues of human rights and the environment, another domain in which an interrelational understanding is inescapable. I will argue that an intercultural translation methodology is our best hope for moving beyond stale dichotomies that treat human rights and religions as isolatable oppositional categories and the environment as a reified set of resources meant to fuel relentless post-capitalist drives. Furthermore, learning to translate religious perspectives understood anthropologically can enfranchise a critically important relational understanding of human flourishing. To be gained are invaluable opportunities towards saving human rights from the semantic fog that otherwise obscures any possibility for their fulfilment.
Int J Semiot Law, 2023
The so-called ‘Right to Be Forgotten’ cases have been provoked by people’s desires to make their ... more The so-called ‘Right to Be Forgotten’ cases have been provoked by people’s desires to make their own determinations about what personal information is accessible online to others (and when, and how) in a world of data permanence. Legally at stake is how personhood is defined and defended. Thus far, European law has pri- marily concerned itself with the delisting of ‘data subjects’ from search results and the deletion or anonymization of personal information from and by search engine operators. As a result, personhood has fallen into a kind of legislative void [43] I argue that this void is engendered by an old friction between the traditional Western secularist cognitive models that have formed the skeleton of Western law and the pulsing flesh of living human subject creation that pushes back against it. At the very least, the digital immortality of our images, voices, words and more, are bring- ing forth a variety of aspects of our ‘person.’ Meanwhile, religious worldviews have long understood and made use of phenomenological ideas of human becoming and transcendence that are far more congruous with how—even modern secular—peo- ple make meaning of their lives and self-creation, and how they think of posthumous existence. Moving through and with some of the most recent thinking in philosophy, anthropology, and cognitive science, I will develop the argument that human sub- jectivity is not only impossible to limit to the body, but that a radicalized ecological view is the only one that can ‘save’ us.
Calumet - Intercultural Law and Humanities Review, 2021
Human rights, when understood and applied interculturally, offer an interface for translating and... more Human rights, when understood and applied interculturally, offer an interface for translating and mediating values across global diversities. Religions have long done the same, attempting to provide meaning that bridges human-to-human as well as human-to-divine relationships through a universalist ethos. Still, the two are often pitted against each other with religions accused of a particularism that only human rights with its global aspirations can overcome. At the same time, the alleged universality of human rights has also been often criticized for passing off as universal a limited set of values with, paradoxically, Christian European origins. Meanwhile, and also as a result of the Covid-19 global pandemic, technology is mediating our daily experiences around the world now more than ever. Critics argue that this shift is 'dehumanizing' and risks alienating people and exacerbating conflicts among diverse groups. I will argue that neither the contrast between human rights and religion nor the supposed affective limitations and negative effects of technology are accurate. Instead, religions contain universalist resources that could be crucial to investing human rights with the affective power to make them meaningful interfaces. Human rights frameworks drained of their meaning by submersion in abstractness could be revitalized by universalistic attitudes toward space and affect. Online technologies, similarly, do not entirely obstruct our capacities for empathy but instead have the power to bridge otherwise faraway realities in potentially more productive ways than could occur 'face-to-face.' A supporting analysis of empathy and emotions online will undergird this claim. Understanding the potential synergies among human rights, religions, and technologies, viewed anthropologically, could help to pave the way for new avenues of interaction and engagement with real social effects. Indeed, such an approach holds the potential to help move the needle on the overwhelming disparities brought on and exacerbated by capital-driven globalization. Without this effort, there can be no hope for the only kind of democracy left to develop: global democracy.
Calumet. Intercultural Law and Humanities Review, 2020
From the right to information to the right to privacy, from freedom of expression to protection f... more From the right to information to the right to privacy, from freedom of expression to protection from defamation, online conflicts are troubling private entities and jurists alike, particularly as the ever-increasing spread of global communications changes the meaning and impact of territories and jurisdiction. Beneath the hubbub runs a babbling brook of values, as pervasive and persistent as they are hidden. Religiously rooted conceptions permeate our legal decisions even as technological approaches are proposed as solutions. In this vein, a recent legal decision of the CJEU ordering Facebook to remove posts adjudicated as defamatory has mostly been analyzed in terms of content filtering technology. The essay argues, however, that true import of the case lies in the largely unattended cultural motors that are silently and perhaps inadvertently determining social paths. These religious and cultural values extend tendrils across global platforms through blunt decisions that lack the nuance to address potential impacts. At risk is a detachment between law and common sense in which fundamental human rights are not only unprotected, but not even acknowledged. Changing this state of affairs requires a more sophisticated cultural awareness that leverages the semiotic potential of legal instruments to deliver interculturally aware solutions.
Calumet - Intercultural Law and Humanities Review, 2020
The restrictions on human movements put into place by states in response to the 2020 global outbr... more The restrictions on human movements put into place by states in response to the 2020 global outbreak of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 have disrupted every category of society, not least religion and law. Freedom of religion has been pitted against right to health across several categories. Areas of conflict such as the prohibition of holding church mass and the closing of churches have been fairly easy to reconcile against the greater weight of the right to health and safety. There is one area of conflict that seems to give pause, however, to even those most supportive of the current need for public restrictions: the handling of the moment of death and the funeral rites and rituals that typically follow. I would like to compare Italy, as the seat of the Catholic church and the first Western country struck by the pandemic, and the US, the country currently most affected by the virus at the time of this writing, and itself frequently at the center of religious freedom debates. I will exp...
Pólemos: Journal of Law, Literature and Culture, 2022
Laws punish delinquents after having made them such, and yet this is not inevitable. At work in t... more Laws punish delinquents after having made them such, and yet this is not inevitable. At work in this phenomenon is a melding of ‘ought’ and ‘is’ in which the law renders criminal behavior perpetually determinative by recognizing only a duty to abide by statutes while simultaneously losing site of the magma of meanings and behaviors that constitute human lives. Using the core of Hugo’s epic Les Misérables as a kind of mirroring illustration, this paper will explore how categorical rigidity and blindness to the changing contours of identity and subjectivity constitute one dark side of the law. Hugo’s work demonstrates the importance of literature as a parallel narrative that can illuminate law’s limitations, specifically, its tendency to conceal through certainty, ignoring the actual possibilities of becoming for the subjects it is charged to rule and protect. I will argue that in Les Misérables we can see an inversion in the order of priority between narrative commitment and social c...
Calumet - Intercultural Law and Humanities Review, 2016
Sweden has been widely recognized as one of the most modern and progressive European democracies.... more Sweden has been widely recognized as one of the most modern and progressive European democracies. Swedes themselves often claim they are more democratic, progressive, and intrinsically more “freedom-loving” than other nations. The case of Ellinor Grimmark, a Swedish midwife who has been denied the possibility to conscientiously object to performing abortions as part of her professional duties despite laws in place that support this right, begs the question: why? At the other end of the spectrum is the situation regarding conscientious objection and abortion in Italy, where mass objections on the part of medical staff are creating a serious threat to the right to obtain an abortion, despite laws in place to protect this right. This paper will not take a political position on the issue, but rather argue that both the censure of Ellinor Grimmark and the mass objection of medical staff in Italy may be examples of an uncovering of particular cultural principles, or “hidden rules of behav...
Semiotica, 2019
What does it mean to spatialize food? Why combine such an analysis with law, or with signs and sp... more What does it mean to spatialize food? Why combine such an analysis with law, or with signs and spaces? Leveraging Peircean-inspired legal semiotic theory, the spatialized nature of food will serve as a porthole through which a semiotic view of the spatial dimensions of legal experience can be discerned and elaborated. Specifically, case studies of the simultaneously material and immaterial aspects of food will support an analysis that seeks to open avenues of conceptualization regarding categories. The semiotic nature of both food and law will drive a discussion of the “dis-composition” of categories. Though such an effort may appear overly scholarly and far from pragmatic, exactly the opposite claim will be made. Case studies such as that of the “Meatball Wars” will illustrate in plain terms how subject position struggles for space cannot be adequately addressed within traditional disciplinary boundaries. The essay will conclude with a demonstration of how a “discomposing” semiotic...
International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique, 2020
What is the relationship between law and religion in the modern Western secular city? Has religio... more What is the relationship between law and religion in the modern Western secular city? Has religion been effectively subdued by secularization, its effects limited by law? Is the law neutral in its regard and treatment of religion? Does law have any limits in this regard? How does it go about formulating the limits of the city itself, in this context? Though it would seem that historical projects of secularization intended to employ strategies to drive the religious into the private realm, separating it from responsibilities deemed to belong to secular state apparatuses, I argue that these projects were never able to reach an absolute point or state of finalization. A deeper investigation of this “incompleteness” can offer a kind of analytical key to understanding why it is that conflicts between the secular and the religious persist. There is another somehow parallel incompleteness to cities themselves if we approach them from a semiotic-spatial point of view that I think strongly informs these issues. Following modern philosophers, phenomenologists and geographers in their studies of space, I take the view that space is not an entity “out there,” existing a priori, but rather a social, sensorial and ultimately semiotic construction. Like secularization itself, then, the secular city is not (and cannot be) a “completed” entity but is rather a never-ceasing series of creations, disruptions and destructions. Understanding the religious in the secular city requires unbundling or unmasking its apparent material evidence to see how it is lived, and how it too creates, disrupts, destructs and resurges, eventually. The law of the secular city must engage the secular and the religious even as they fail to keep still. It may, however, have a strategic advantage in its own mutability, in the power of its semantic flexibility. The essay will attempt to show how the very mobility and changeability of law and its objects, once acknowledged, or brought to light, can empower processes of discomposition that trigger categorical shifts resulting in new outcomes to conflicts. In this way, the spatial limits of law could perhaps transform into unlimited possibilities for the agency of “secular” citizens.
Calumet International Law and Humanities Review, 2019
Overpopulation is a fraught concept because it immediately involves several competing ideas. Firs... more Overpopulation is a fraught concept because it immediately involves several competing ideas. First, the primary objectives of the human race vis a vis reproduction. Second, conflicting ecological understandings of the planet and the human impact on it, and finally, complex contradictions regarding what humans can and should “do” about all these conflicts. At the heart of the ensuing conflicts is the impossibility of definitively casting the issue of overpopulation as an exclusively natural/biological problem or instead a social/cultural problem: population straddles these domains at every angle. Discussions of “human nature,” as something internal and
inexorable slide messily into discourse regarding “Nature,” intended as something outside, surrounding us. Any decision taken in an attempt to solve population excesses collides headlong into “natural” circumstances
alongside those which are manmade. “Preserving” land or planting trees are often accompanied by the evacuation of people. Clearing land for industrial production similarly produces the displacement of people or
the compromising of their living conditions, and then pollution and resource extraction with a broad negative impact on humans. Using medically assisted means to produce children currently results in thousands of
“excess” embryos. The choice to avoid all “intervention” in support of “natural” reproduction has similarly led to bourgeoning populations. These contradictions demonstrate how it is impossible to cleanly separate (or
universally define) “human nature” and “planetary/outside nature” because both are continuously built, or constructed, in evident but also more subtle ways. There is no pre-existing singular “nature” inside nor outside that exists without our inventions and interventions. The positive side of this conundrum is that we have creative tools available to invent and intervene. Both religious and secular approaches to the challenges of “nature” have cognitive as well as ethical/moral contributions that can be leveraged toward the construction of new solutions. We must compare these dimensions meaningfully if we are to have any hope of solving an increasingly cramped ecological coexistence. If we can unpack the components of a wider span of ideas about Nature and its contrasting legitimations, we may find possibilities for categorical openings, ways of seeing that reveal new creative approaches to realizing human needs and desires while simultaneously attending to steadily growing and ever more urgent environmental concerns.
Conscientious objection in Swedish and Italian healthcare: Paradoxical secularizations and unbalanced pluralisms, 2018
Sweden has been widely recognized as one of the most modern and progressive European democracies.... more Sweden has been widely recognized as one of the most modern and progressive European democracies. Swedes themselves often claim they are more democratic, progressive, and intrinsically more “freedom-loving” than other nations. The case of Ellinor Grimmark, a Swedish midwife who has been denied the possibility to conscientiously object to performing abortions as part of her professional duties despite laws in place that support this right, begs the question: why? At the other end of the spectrum is the situation regarding conscientious objection and abortion in Italy, where mass objections on the part of medical staff are creating a serious threat to the right to obtain an abortion, despite laws in place to protect this right. This chapter argues that both the censure of Ellinor Grimmark and the mass objection of medical staff in Italy may be examples of an uncovering of particular cultural principles, or “hidden rules of behavior,” that underlie the fabric of these two democracies in direct contradiction with their public declarations and conceptions. The ossification of key concepts at the heart of these conflicts contribute to a blindness that blocks out possible solutions. The frictions between national legal codes and Human Rights protections at the European level complicate the issue of conscientious objection further. What happens to human rights when ‘margin of appreciation’ considerations overrule individual claims? What is the role of legal pluralism in cases where the tension between religion and law threatens to reduce the debate into an explosive clash of values? Theoretical approaches, including “intercultural translation,” will be elucidated as a means of exploring possible solutions for current struggles within legal pluralism, secularism and freedom, and in defense of human rights.
Human Rights in Translation: Intercultural Pathways, 2018
From the introduction:
"Melisa Vazquez examines the Western European secularism project, viewed ... more From the introduction:
"Melisa Vazquez examines the Western European secularism project, viewed through the lens of human and universal rights. She suggests that the incompleteness of this project may be playing a role in inflaming violent conflicts. After the November 2015 terrorist attacks on Paris, leaders condemned the attacks as an affront against all of humanity and “universal values,” but they separated religions from acts of terrorism, while the terrorists claimed they were attacking European “Crusaders.” Vazquez points out that the Western invocations against the barbarism of a self-declared religious enemy may, in fact, be practicing religiously infused, unaware secularism, especially that not a single state leader has responded to the overtly religious accusations of the attackers with a defense of secularism or even laïcité, a key French state policy. The larger question she poses is whether the unfinished project of secularism has naturalized Christian values to such an extent that they are no longer seen or nameable, even as they directly inform critical political responses."
Semiotica: Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies / Revue de l Association Internationale de Sémiotique (SEMI). , 2019
What does it mean to spatialize food? Why combine such an analysis with law, or with signs and sp... more What does it mean to spatialize food? Why combine such an analysis with law, or with signs and spaces? Leveraging Peircean-inspired legal semiotic theory, the spatialized nature of food will serve as a porthole through which a semiotic view of the spatial dimensions of legal experience can be discerned and elaborated. Specifically, case studies of the simultaneously material and immaterial aspects of food will support an analysis that seeks to open avenues of conceptualization regarding categories. The semiotic nature of both food and law will drive a discussion of the “dis-composition” of categories. Though such an effort may appear overly scholarly and far from pragmatic, exactly the opposite claim will be made. Case studies such as that of the “Meatball Wars” will illustrate in plain terms how subject position struggles for space cannot be adequately addressed within traditional disciplinary boundaries. The essay will conclude with a demonstration of how a “discomposing” semiotic approach has the potential to serve as a means of enabling conflict resolution on a broader scale. The overall investigation is motivated by the struggle within academia—seen in nearly all the disciplines within the Humanities—to rethink traditional foundational assumptions and dichotomies. The argument seeks to ground itself in the interconnectedness increasingly advanced, joining scholars who insist on the importance of anthro-historical context, local particulars, and the impossibility of assuming an objective position that can coolly observe phenomena from “outside.”
Quaderni di diritto e politica ecclesiastica, 2019
There is no more fundamental element in our existence than water. We are made of it, we depend on... more There is no more fundamental element in our existence than water. We are made of it, we depend on it to survive, our planet is made of it. Land is shaped by it, weather is constituted by it, it defines our existence. How we think about it, treat it, use it as resource, share or fail to share it, is the most important determinant of our survival. Religions seem to have understood this from the start, considering the centrality of water to creation myths, destruction myths, ritual cleansing and transformation, the power of holy water, etc. Given the ongoing crucial nature of water to our survival, and the increasing instances of water scarcity, might we have something to learn from religions about how to think about water? Understanding that water is both material structure and cultural product, as well as always in flux, new, interdisciplinary perspectives are needed that understand «how belief systems and knowledge about water have been rooted in history and must be analyzed from a spatial, geographical perspective. If such an analysis is
to move beyond a strictly philosophical or sociological realm, it will necessarily engage with the law, since it is the law that erects borders and river banks, the law that permits or denies the pipes, dams and filtration systems that funnel water into our societal veins. This paper will analyze religious perspectives on water from an anthropological view, placing them in dialogue with the law. At this intersection, questions that arise include: is a purportedly secular and neutral Human Rights regime determining a view of water that stands in contrast to differing religiously-rooted world views? Are there alternatively rooted views that might impact how access to water is regulated? For example, insofar as religions have much to say about the role of water in daily life, might water regimes be considered part of religious freedom? How can law engage with a diversity of world views to the benefit of new solutions to water crisis conflicts?
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Books by Melisa Liana Vazquez
https://romatrepress.uniroma3.it/libro/varieties-of-religious-space-freedom-worship-and-urban-justice/
Papers by Melisa Liana Vazquez
inexorable slide messily into discourse regarding “Nature,” intended as something outside, surrounding us. Any decision taken in an attempt to solve population excesses collides headlong into “natural” circumstances
alongside those which are manmade. “Preserving” land or planting trees are often accompanied by the evacuation of people. Clearing land for industrial production similarly produces the displacement of people or
the compromising of their living conditions, and then pollution and resource extraction with a broad negative impact on humans. Using medically assisted means to produce children currently results in thousands of
“excess” embryos. The choice to avoid all “intervention” in support of “natural” reproduction has similarly led to bourgeoning populations. These contradictions demonstrate how it is impossible to cleanly separate (or
universally define) “human nature” and “planetary/outside nature” because both are continuously built, or constructed, in evident but also more subtle ways. There is no pre-existing singular “nature” inside nor outside that exists without our inventions and interventions. The positive side of this conundrum is that we have creative tools available to invent and intervene. Both religious and secular approaches to the challenges of “nature” have cognitive as well as ethical/moral contributions that can be leveraged toward the construction of new solutions. We must compare these dimensions meaningfully if we are to have any hope of solving an increasingly cramped ecological coexistence. If we can unpack the components of a wider span of ideas about Nature and its contrasting legitimations, we may find possibilities for categorical openings, ways of seeing that reveal new creative approaches to realizing human needs and desires while simultaneously attending to steadily growing and ever more urgent environmental concerns.
"Melisa Vazquez examines the Western European secularism project, viewed through the lens of human and universal rights. She suggests that the incompleteness of this project may be playing a role in inflaming violent conflicts. After the November 2015 terrorist attacks on Paris, leaders condemned the attacks as an affront against all of humanity and “universal values,” but they separated religions from acts of terrorism, while the terrorists claimed they were attacking European “Crusaders.” Vazquez points out that the Western invocations against the barbarism of a self-declared religious enemy may, in fact, be practicing religiously infused, unaware secularism, especially that not a single state leader has responded to the overtly religious accusations of the attackers with a defense of secularism or even laïcité, a key French state policy. The larger question she poses is whether the unfinished project of secularism has naturalized Christian values to such an extent that they are no longer seen or nameable, even as they directly inform critical political responses."
to move beyond a strictly philosophical or sociological realm, it will necessarily engage with the law, since it is the law that erects borders and river banks, the law that permits or denies the pipes, dams and filtration systems that funnel water into our societal veins. This paper will analyze religious perspectives on water from an anthropological view, placing them in dialogue with the law. At this intersection, questions that arise include: is a purportedly secular and neutral Human Rights regime determining a view of water that stands in contrast to differing religiously-rooted world views? Are there alternatively rooted views that might impact how access to water is regulated? For example, insofar as religions have much to say about the role of water in daily life, might water regimes be considered part of religious freedom? How can law engage with a diversity of world views to the benefit of new solutions to water crisis conflicts?
https://romatrepress.uniroma3.it/libro/varieties-of-religious-space-freedom-worship-and-urban-justice/
inexorable slide messily into discourse regarding “Nature,” intended as something outside, surrounding us. Any decision taken in an attempt to solve population excesses collides headlong into “natural” circumstances
alongside those which are manmade. “Preserving” land or planting trees are often accompanied by the evacuation of people. Clearing land for industrial production similarly produces the displacement of people or
the compromising of their living conditions, and then pollution and resource extraction with a broad negative impact on humans. Using medically assisted means to produce children currently results in thousands of
“excess” embryos. The choice to avoid all “intervention” in support of “natural” reproduction has similarly led to bourgeoning populations. These contradictions demonstrate how it is impossible to cleanly separate (or
universally define) “human nature” and “planetary/outside nature” because both are continuously built, or constructed, in evident but also more subtle ways. There is no pre-existing singular “nature” inside nor outside that exists without our inventions and interventions. The positive side of this conundrum is that we have creative tools available to invent and intervene. Both religious and secular approaches to the challenges of “nature” have cognitive as well as ethical/moral contributions that can be leveraged toward the construction of new solutions. We must compare these dimensions meaningfully if we are to have any hope of solving an increasingly cramped ecological coexistence. If we can unpack the components of a wider span of ideas about Nature and its contrasting legitimations, we may find possibilities for categorical openings, ways of seeing that reveal new creative approaches to realizing human needs and desires while simultaneously attending to steadily growing and ever more urgent environmental concerns.
"Melisa Vazquez examines the Western European secularism project, viewed through the lens of human and universal rights. She suggests that the incompleteness of this project may be playing a role in inflaming violent conflicts. After the November 2015 terrorist attacks on Paris, leaders condemned the attacks as an affront against all of humanity and “universal values,” but they separated religions from acts of terrorism, while the terrorists claimed they were attacking European “Crusaders.” Vazquez points out that the Western invocations against the barbarism of a self-declared religious enemy may, in fact, be practicing religiously infused, unaware secularism, especially that not a single state leader has responded to the overtly religious accusations of the attackers with a defense of secularism or even laïcité, a key French state policy. The larger question she poses is whether the unfinished project of secularism has naturalized Christian values to such an extent that they are no longer seen or nameable, even as they directly inform critical political responses."
to move beyond a strictly philosophical or sociological realm, it will necessarily engage with the law, since it is the law that erects borders and river banks, the law that permits or denies the pipes, dams and filtration systems that funnel water into our societal veins. This paper will analyze religious perspectives on water from an anthropological view, placing them in dialogue with the law. At this intersection, questions that arise include: is a purportedly secular and neutral Human Rights regime determining a view of water that stands in contrast to differing religiously-rooted world views? Are there alternatively rooted views that might impact how access to water is regulated? For example, insofar as religions have much to say about the role of water in daily life, might water regimes be considered part of religious freedom? How can law engage with a diversity of world views to the benefit of new solutions to water crisis conflicts?