Entangled Law : A Study of the Entanglement of Wolves, Humans, and Law in the Landscape

Sammanfattning: With the legal protection of wolves in Sweden as an object of study, this dissertation examines how bodies often perceived as legal, social or natural entangle in a common co-production of law. The thesis begins with an analysis of how entanglements of nature, society and law have been discussed in environmental legal scholarship, with a main focus on the Uppsala Environmental Legal Method and Critical Environmental Law. Concepts from New Materialism and Legal Pluralism are then explored in order to contribute to the development of an understanding of law as co-produced in a mesh of entangled bodies in the landscape. Applying these concepts and discussions on legal protection of wolves, legal acts and institutions involved in the management of wolves are analysed through their entanglement with other bodies in the landscape. Special focus is set on legal hunting and a series of judgements concerning licenced hunting on wolves as well as on the entanglement of formal and informal norms in hunting communities. The wolf is reimagined as co-producing its legal protection through its entanglements with bodies such as human discourses and not least the law itself. The result is a reassembling of the legal protection of wolves in Sweden as a rhizome where law is co-produced through entanglements of multiplicities of bodies, only some of which are commonly viewed as legal. This understanding opens up legal analysis for a broader search for knowledges and solutions, which in turn can facilitate the co-existence of wolves and people in shared landscapes. The thesis also contributes to a general theory of entangled law by its discussion of a new materialist legal pluralism as well as the application of these theories on the issue of legal protection of wolves in Sweden.