Development, environment and outer space

Human engagement with outer space is utterly material, situated in specific places, and bound up with existing flows of minerals, labour, power and expertise. As a global commons that is simultaneously immense and immediate, awe-inspiring and familiar, contemporary outer space politics are characterized by dynamics familiar to scholars and activists concerned with the fate of diverse commons on Earth.

Drawing on international multilingual fieldwork and archival research, Dr Julie Klinger’s current book project aims to rethink human engagement with outer space through the intersectional lens of critical development studies with an emphasis on how inhabitants in other so-called frontiers — the Amazon rainforest, the Mongolian Steppe, mines and rocket ranges in high deserts and plains across the globe — engage in the production of space on the so-called final frontier through their relations to land, technology, and the state.

The purpose of this lecture and seminar is to present work from Dr Klinger’s current book project and engage in productive debate on the intersection between central themes in critical development studies and diverse onto-epistemologies of outer space.