Making Nature/Marking Humans: Law as a Site of (Cultural) Production

This article engages both the “construction of nature” thesis and the project of legal geography to examine law as a culturally significant site wherein “nature” is produced. Because the meaning of “nature” is often a function of its contrasts with the category “human,” to participate in the construction of one is, almost by definition, to participate in the construction of the other. After discussing law as a site of cultural production in general terms, this article surveys a range of legal contexts in which the nature/human distinction is a central conceptual-political concern. These contexts include nature as externality (wilderness), animality (bestiality), and corporeality (reproductive technologies and the involuntary medication of inmates). The article's conclusion addresses the pragmatics of constructivism within the context of existing humanist-liberal legal frames of reference.