Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Problem of Personhood: Giving Rights to Trees, Corporations and Robots

The Problem of Personhood: Giving Rights to Trees, Corporations and Robots

Siraganian, Lisa

Hardcover

General SociologySocial Movements

Publisher Price: $26.95

ISBN10: 180429344X
ISBN13: 9781804293447
Publisher: Verso
Published: Feb 17 2026
Pages: 224
Weight: 0.85
Height: 0.90 Width: 5.90 Depth: 9.30
Language: English
SHOULD NONHUMANS HAVE RIGHTS IN LAW AND POLITICS?

Over the last twenty-five years, the concept of per-sonhood has become central to many contentious debates. Corporations have won free speech protections, as if they were individuals. The right to life or freedom has been claimed on behalf of fetuses, trees, and elephants. The fund of human rights is spilling over into the nonhuman.

The Problem of Personhood reveals the unsettling consequences of granting rights to imagined persons, such as Sophia the robot citizen or New Zealand's Whanganui River. Synthesizing the political and phil­osophical debates on personhood and drawing on a varied cast of thinkers that includes Simone Weil, Hannah Arendt, and Dr. Seuss, Lisa Siraganian un­covers the disturbing impact of this contemporary development. Awarding rights to robots and rivers all too easily becomes a legal tool to turn people into capital. When robot Sophia is made a citizen, she is transformed into a subject in the law without the corre­sponding legal duties that protect us from her.

At the root of this trend is the US Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling that grants First Amendment rights to corporations as if they were individuals. The result has not been the transformation of things into humans so much as humans into things, when animals and the environment would be better protected with reference to our humanity rather than to theirs.

1 different editions

Also available

Also from

Siraganian, Lisa

View All

Also in

Social Movements

View All