Indigenous Cosmopoetics of Justice - Law, Posthumanism and the Ecology of Cocoa

This book examines cocoa farming in northeast Brazil to explore a fundamental question: can ecological relationships create their own form of law?
Through the study of indigenous people and landless workers who use sustainable farming practices to restore damaged lands, the book analyses how humans and nature together create social and ecological systems that function as a kind of "viscous law," with flexible rules emerging from relationships with the land and its diverse lifeforms. Unlike rigid modern legal systems, this "viscous law" adapts to the realities of cocoa ecology and how it connects people, plants, and animals within global environmental systems. It addresses the practical needs of land rights struggles while recognising relationships that Western legal systems often ignore.
An Indigenous Cosmopoetics of Justice is of interest to legal theorists, as well as those with interests in the areas of indigenous studies, postcolonial studies and ecology.

List of contents

Chapter 1:Introduction.
Chapter 2: Decomposing the Law
Chapter 3: A Perspectivist Autoethnography
Chapter 4: An Autoethnography of Modernisation
Chapter 5: The Entropies of Modernisation
Chapter 6: Cocoa Knots
Chapter 7: Composting the Collectives
Chapter 8: Conclusion

About the author

Renan Porto is a writer and postdoctorate researcher at the Institute of Literary Studies of the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland. Holding a PhD in law from the University of Westminster, London, his work spans critical legal theory, environmental humanities, indigenous studies, posthuman anthropology and postcolonial theories. Porto's research endeavours to reimagine political and legal categories through indigenous perspectives, exploring their potential to forge new forms of existence in the face of climate change. He is the author of the book of essays Políticas de Riobaldo (Cepe, 2021) and the poetry book O Cólera A Febre (Urutau, 2018).

Product details

• Authors: Renan Porto
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 14.01.2026
• EAN: 9781041099789
• ISBN: 978-1-0-4109978-9
• No. of pages: 208
• Series: Indigenous Peoples and the Law
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Modern era up to 1918; Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > General, dictionaries; Ethnic Studies, Sociology, Cultural Studies, NATURE / Ecology, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Colonialism & Post-Colonialism, Anthropology, International Law, Applied ecology, Colonialism & imperialism, Colonialism and imperialism, Jurisprudence & general issues, Social Law, Jurisprudence and general issues, Social law and Medical law, LAW / Indigenous Law & Legal Systems, Ethnic studies / Ethnicity, postcolonial;nature-culture distinction;extractivism