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Reassessing the role of plants in society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 April 2017

Robert Amos
Robert Amos*
Affiliation:
PhD student, University of Sussex, School of Law, Politics and Sociology. E-mail: r.amos@sussex.ac.uk
*
r.amos@sussex.ac.uk
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Abstract

Plants have been and will continue to be fundamental to the evolution of human society. However, the law’s traditional approach to plants, based broadly on the need to facilitate the exploitation of plants for the benefit of humans and to regulate the impacts of that exploitation, fails to recognise the ways in which plants can be said to participate in society. This participation takes three forms: a contribution to the achievement of social goals, the shaping of social spaces and the influencing of individual and collective human behaviours. It is argued that the recognition of these roles that plants play in society in law and policy could begin to redress the continuing decline in plant diversity, and lead to a reformed understanding of society’s relationship with plants and the wider natural world.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Law in Context , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , September 2017 , pp. 295 - 315
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

I am grateful to Professors Stuart Harrop of Kingston University (London) and Donald McGillivray of Sussex University for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper, and also to the anonymous referees for their invaluable feedback and suggestions.

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