The sessions on May 11 and June 8 are devoted to the operational tools for democratically thinking about landscape law, beyond the question of the right to landscape for human groups.
Moderated by Jean-Marc Besse, philosopher, geographer and CNRS research director, EHESS
Guest:
Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde, legal philosopher ENS Title: Can a river have rights?
In March 2017, New Zealand’s Whanganui River acquired legal personality. Since then, similar cases have arisen around the world. How does a river become a subject of rights? Can we believe in such a proposition, and what sense does it make? Are all these cases based on the same principle? Are we witnessing a return to natural law, forced by the environmental crisis, or, on the contrary, a reverse movement: that of an increased socialization of nature, making it a political actor rather than a mere object of protection?
Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde is Professor of Law and Economics at the Université Paris II Panthéon-Assas and the University of Haifa. He is the author of Être la rivière (PUF, 2020) and Comment le droit nous rapproche de la nature (PUF, 2024). His work analyzes the links between forms of rationality, legal devices and economic models, in order to assess the conditions of legitimacy and transformation of contemporary institutions – in particular through intellectual property regimes and theories of rights applied to natural entities.
The sessions on May 11 and June 8 are devoted to the operational tools for democratically thinking about landscape law, beyond the question of the right to landscape for human groups.
Moderated by Jean-Marc Besse, philosopher, geographer and CNRS research director, EHESS
Guest:
Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde, legal philosopher ENS Title: Can a river have rights?
In March 2017, New Zealand’s Whanganui River acquired legal personality. Since then, similar cases have arisen around the world. How does a river become a subject of rights? Can we believe in such a proposition, and what sense does it make? Are all these cases based on the same principle? Are we witnessing a return to natural law, forced by the environmental crisis, or, on the contrary, a reverse movement: that of an increased socialization of nature, making it a political actor rather than a mere object of protection?
Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde is Professor of Law and Economics at the Université Paris II Panthéon-Assas and the University of Haifa. He is the author of Être la rivière (PUF, 2020) and Comment le droit nous rapproche de la nature (PUF, 2024). His work analyzes the links between forms of rationality, legal devices and economic models, in order to assess the conditions of legitimacy and transformation of contemporary institutions – in particular through intellectual property regimes and theories of rights applied to natural entities.
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Situated art and artefacts as activators of social bonds: from the outside to the laboratory and vice versa
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In the first session, we'll be looking back at how the act of the hand and the body's engagement with the land and living matter, through the artistic act and gardening, create a potential network of social relationships, and even a fabric of urbanity.
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In the second session, we'll be looking at the issues raised by an emblematic public square in Marseille, the Cours Julien (1st and 6th arrondissements).
The Mucem, the venue for our discussions, echoes this theme by raising the question of its spatial design, including its gardens, and the public place it embodies in its operation. By observing the Cours Julien, we’ll explore what might constitute the architecture of the neighborhood. Voted one of the “coolest neighborhoods in the world” by British magazine Time Out in 2023, the Cours Julien is one of Marseille’s best-loved and most frequented spots. Through a series of...
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at 14h
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Architecture and landscape for democratic living #3
The sessions on May 11 and June 8 are devoted to the operational tools for democratically thinking about landscape law, beyond the question of the right to landscape for human groups.
In the West, the question of land law is a structuring factor in approaches to spatial planning, and conditions our relationship with landscapes and architecture. If we imagine a law that challenges this approach, from the perspective of the environmental humanities, how can we think about landscape law and make natural entities subjects rather than objects of law?
Moderated by Jean-Marc Besse, philosopher, geographer and CNRS research director, EHESS Guests: Sarah Vanuxem, jurist, Université de Côte d’Azur, title: “Du droit de déambuler” (“The right to stroll”) Since the dawn of modernity, the right to roam and subsist freely on the land has been progressively prohibited. From an ecological and ethical point of view, however, it is vital to recover a world that is porous and traversable, both for humans and for other living...On Monday, May 11, 2026
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