N-EXTLAW project

The spectacular growth of the global economy today is associated with some collateral consequences such as the rise of inequality, the increase of climate migrants and refugees as well as significant damages to the environment. As a result, new economic and social proposals inspired by non-extractive economic practices have emerged, such as the circular economy and restriction of growth in favour of sustainable development. However, existing economic systems, purchasing behaviour and legal frames as well as political rhetoric treat such proposals as impracticable and utopic. The EU-funded N-EXTLAW project proposes a study that aims to show how private law can make such radical proposals politically trustworthy, providing policy ideas and legal instruments that will make non-extractive economic practices appealing and realistic.

Main objectives

The current economic model is overdue for revision. The relentless focus on economic growth is ravaging the environment, and the concomitant social problems have either already reached glaring levels (rocketing global inequality) or seem poised to do so (climate displaced persons). A number of radical proposals, such as prosperity without growth, circular economy, or doughnut economics, have been proposed to chart a trajectory towards socio-ecological transformation, arguing that a profound change in our ways of living and modes of production is necessary in order to respond to the threats we face. Yet such proposals, however commendable, have gained only modest political traction, insofar as they seem unthinkable from the vantage point of our current economic system, consumption patterns, political discourse and legal institutions. This project will show how law can contribute to making such transformative projects politically credible. More specifically, it will demonstrate how law, and private law in particular, can be used to nurture those existing economic practices that already build on the environmental and social aspirations embodied by such projects. The two main objectives are, first, to offer a set of legal tools and policy proposals that would make the adoption of environmentally and socially non-extractive economic practices, such as social cooperatives or solidary financial institutions, more attractive for people to implement. Second, N-EXTLAW theorizes how law can turn seemingly utopian projects for socio-ecological transformation into a realistic legal-political project. By refashioning the concrete socio-legal arrangements for pursuing non-extractive economic practices as well as re-shaping the values on which economic decision-making draws, law can make non-extractive economic practices more present in everyday action, and thereby uphold those cultural frames that affirm the sense that socio-ecological transformation is within our reach.

Main results

The N-EXTLAW Project has made significant advancements, and gone ‘beyond the state of the art’ principally in the methodology it adopts. The successful conclusion of our PAR study in the Netherlands has demonstrated that a) PAR can be applied with a focus on (private) law, with b) participants other than those from fully marginalised communities trying to solve very specific problem, and c) that such communities can emerge even where the problems they face are not identical. Furthermore, N-EXTLAW has heavily documented our experiences using PAR and is currently working on two publications that detail how PAR should be applied in legal settings. The first is a paper: ‘PAR: Towards a non-extractive methodological framework’ (Bogoeski and Fry); the second is a blog post: ‘Transformative Alignments between Participatory Action Research and Private Law’ (Lazell). By focussing our efforts on studying the use of PAR, the N-EXTLAW Project has advanced the state of the art regarding use of the PAR methodology in law and the wider social sciences. Although unexpected at the time of project writing, N-EXTLAW will produce more articles than envisaged and an additional book manuscript. Alongside the N-EXTLAW PhD thesis, focusing on whether profit distributions pose an obstacle in the shift to non-extractive economy (reliant on PAR and ethnography as the method), and the PI’s synthesis manuscript on non-extractive private law as a new form of governmentality, the PI will produce also a book on the changing imaginaries of the political economy in the EU. This book argues that we can observe the elements of non-extraction in the current EU’s initiatives and actions, and suggests pathways to strengthen these elements. The latter book is on contract with Cambridge University Press.

N-EXTLAW

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