scholarly journals Making Outer Space Intimate: Familiar Scales and Strange Sites (Panel, AAA 2015)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. Oman-Reagan ◽  
Kira Turner
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Outer Space ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Space And Place ◽  
Interstellar Space ◽  
Space Tourism ◽  
Tourism Studies ◽  
History Of ◽  
A Site ◽  
Intimate Encounters

Building on anthropology’s attunement to multiple registers of inquiry, this panel finds intimate engagements with outer space in studies of: the imaginaries of astronomical image making; the politics of otherworldly analog and simulation science; views from the ground and views from space in climate science; the inscription of interstellar space as a site of travel, communication, and speculation; indigenous people’s cosmologies, spaceport construction, and space tourism; and ontologies of space debris in locales both proximate and remote to spacecraft launch sites. These intimate encounters with space shift the cosmos from something remote ‘out there’ into a familiar locale with attendant earthly consequences from awe and hope to conflict and danger. At stake is an understanding of how our activity in space increasingly shapes the ways we imagine and plan for human futures both on and off planet Earth.Keywords: Geography, Archaeology, Space, Interstellar, Tourism Studies, Technology, Climate Change, Space and Place, Political Ecology, Environmental Studies, History of Science, Astrobiology, Exoplanets, STS, Astrophysics, Astronomy, Anthropocene, Science and Technology StudiesPlease cite as:Oman-Reagan, Michael P. and Kira Turner. 2015. Making Outer Space Intimate: Familiar Scales and Strange Sites. Paper session reviewed by General Anthropology Division. 114th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association; Denver, Colorado. 18-22 November.

scholarly journals Anthropology of Outer Space: Familiar Scales, Strange Sites (CFP, AAA 2015)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. Oman-Reagan ◽  
Kira Turner
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Environmental Science ◽  
Outer Space ◽  
Future Studies ◽  
Social Studies Of Science ◽  
Tourism Studies ◽  
Anthropological Fieldwork ◽  
Space Sciences

This panel aims to investigate the meanings, limits, and possibilities of expanding our anthropological fieldwork into space. At stake is an understanding of how human activity in space increasingly shapes possible human futures both on and off planet Earth. We ask: What are the constraints and potentialities of interrogating outer space in this emerging era of science, imagination, exploration, and settlement?Keywords:Robotics, History, Future Studies, Geography, Environmental Science, Physics, Space Sciences, Economics, Anthropology, Medical Anthropology, Political Economy, Ontology, Tourism Studies, Social Sciences, Political Ecology, Astrobiology, Exoplanets, STS, Environmental Sustainability, Social Studies Of Science, Astrophysics, Astronomy, Astroanthropology, Infrastructure, Call for PapersPlease cite as:Oman-Reagan, Michael P. and Kira Turner. 2015. Call for Papers: “Anthropology of Outer Space: Familiar Scales, Strange Sites.” 114th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association; Denver, Colorado. 18-22 November.

Turning Aliens into Socialists

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-93
Author(s):  
Jessica Moberg
Keyword(s):  
Outer Space ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Swedish History ◽  
Second World ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Highly Evolved

Immediately after the Second World War Sweden was struck by a wave of sightings of strange flying objects. In some cases these mass sightings resulted in panic, particularly after authorities failed to identify them. Decades later, these phenomena were interpreted by two members of the Swedish UFO movement, Erland Sandqvist and Gösta Rehn, as alien spaceships, or UFOs. Rehn argued that ‘[t]here is nothing so dramatic in the Swedish history of UFOs as this invasion of alien fly-things’ (Rehn 1969: 50). In this article the interpretation of such sightings proposed by these authors, namely that we are visited by extraterrestrials from outer space, is approached from the perspective of myth theory. According to this mythical theme, not only are we are not alone in the universe, but also the history of humankind has been shaped by encounters with more highly-evolved alien beings. In their modern day form, these kinds of ideas about aliens and UFOs originated in the United States. The reasoning of Sandqvist and Rehn exemplifies the localization process that took place as members of the Swedish UFO movement began to produce their own narratives about aliens and UFOs. The question I will address is: in what ways do these stories change in new contexts? Texts produced by the Swedish UFO movement are analyzed as a case study of this process.

EVIDENCE ABOUT THE FORMATION HISTORY OF NATURAL QUASICRYSTALS IN OUTER SPACE, AND THE OCCURRENCE OF STOLPERITE

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lincoln S. Hollister ◽  
◽  
Chaney Lin ◽  
Glenn J. Macpherson ◽  
Luca Bindi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Outer Space ◽  
Formation History ◽  
History Of

The Reformation of Prophecy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Sujin Pak
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
Priesthood Of All Believers ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
The People ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
A Site ◽  
Developmental Analysis ◽  
Sacred History

The Reformation of Prophecy presents and supports the case for viewing the prophet and biblical prophecy as a powerful lens by which to illuminate many aspects of the reforming work of the Protestant reformers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It provides a chronological and developmental analysis of the significance of the prophet and biblical prophecy across leading Protestant reformers in articulating a theology of the priesthood of all believers, a biblical model of the pastoral office, a biblical vision of the reform of worship, and biblical processes for discerning right interpretation of Scripture. Through the tool of the prophet and biblical prophecy, the reformers framed their work under, within, and in support of the authority of Scripture—for the true prophet speaks the Word of God alone and calls the people, their worship and their beliefs and practices, back to the Word of God. The book also demonstrates how interpretations and understandings of the prophet and biblical prophecy contributed to the formation and consolidation of distinctive confessional identities, especially around differences in their visions of sacred history, Christological exegesis of Old Testament prophecy, and interpretation of Old Testament metaphors. This book illuminates the significant shifts in the history of Protestant reformers’ engagement with the prophet and biblical prophecy—shifts from these serving as a tool to advance the priesthood of all believers to a tool to clarify and buttress clerical identity and authority to a site of polemical-confessional exchange concerning right interpretations of Scripture.

scholarly journals Just Mothering: Amy Coney Barrett and the Racial Politics of American Motherhood

Laws ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 36
Author(s):  
H. Howell Williams
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Political Development ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
White Family ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
History Of ◽  
Republican Motherhood ◽  
A Site ◽  
Confirmation Hearings

Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination and confirmation featured frequent references to her role as a mother. This article situates these references within the trajectory of American political development to demonstrate how motherhood operates as a mechanism for enforcing a white-centered racial order. Through a close analysis of both the history of politicized motherhood as well as Barrett’s nomination and confirmation hearings, I make a series of claims about motherhood and contemporary conservatism. First, conservatives stress the virtuousness of motherhood through a division between public and private spheres that valorizes the middle-class white mother. Second, conservatives emphasize certain mothering practices associated with the middle-class white family. Third, conservatives leverage an epistemological claim about the universality of mothering experiences to universalize white motherhood. Finally, this universalism obscures how motherhood operates as a site in which power distinguishes between good and bad mothers and allocates resources accordingly. By attending to what I call the “republican motherhood script” operating in contemporary conservatism, I argue that motherhood is an ideological apparatus for enforcing a racial order premised on white protectionism.

scholarly journals ‘Policing Is a Profession of the Heart’: Evangelicalism and Modern American Policing

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 194
Author(s):  
Aaron Griffith
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Short History ◽  
Carceral State ◽  
American Life ◽  
Politics And Culture ◽  
American Law ◽  
History Of ◽  
A Site

Though several powerful explorations of modern evangelical influence in American politics and culture have appeared in recent years (many of which illumine the seeming complications of evangelical influence in the Trump era), there is more work that needs to be done on the matter of evangelical understandings of and influence in American law enforcement. This article explores evangelical interest and influence in modern American policing. Drawing upon complementary interpretations of the “antistatist statist” nature of modern evangelicalism and the carceral state, this article offers a short history of modern evangelical understandings of law enforcement and an exploration of contemporary evangelical ministry to police officers. It argues that, in their entries into debates about law enforcement’s purpose in American life, evangelicals frame policing as both a divinely sanctioned activity and a site of sentimental engagement. Both frames expand the power and reach of policing, limiting evangelicals’ abilities to see and correct problems within the profession.

scholarly journals Scarred souls, weary warriors, and military intervention: the emergence of the subject in the just war writings of Jean Bethke Elshtain

2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 859-880 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER LEE
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Just War ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Military Force ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Just War Tradition ◽  
A Site

AbstractOver the past three decades Jean Bethke Elshtain has used her critique and application of just war as a means of engaging with multiple overlapping aspects of identity. Though Elshtain ostensibly writes about war and the justice, or lack of justice, therein, she also uses just war a site of analysis within which different strands of subjectivity are investigated and articulated as part of her broader political theory. This article explores the proposition that Elshtain's most important contribution to the just war tradition is not be found in her provision of codes or her analysis of ad bellum or in bello criteria, conformity to which adjudges war or military intervention to be just or otherwise. Rather, that she enriches just war debate because of the unique and sometimes provocative perspective she brings as political theorist and International Relations scholar who adopts, adapts, and deploys familiar but, for some, uncomfortable discursive artefacts from the history of the Christian West: suffused with her own Christian faith and theology. In so doing she continually reminds us that human lives, with all their attendant political, social, and religious complexities, should be the focus when military force is used, or even proposed, for political ends.

Is the Great Barrier Reef dead? Satire, death and environmental communication

2021 ◽  
pp. 1329878X2110558
Author(s):  
Kerrie Foxwell-Norton ◽  
Claire Konkes
Keyword(s):  
Great Barrier Reef ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Environmental Communication ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Barrier Reef ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
The Us ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
A Site

An obituary for the Great Barrier Reef (the Reef) by travel and food writer Rowan Jacobsen (2016) commemorated its ‘lifetime accomplishments’ in Outside, the US outdoor recreational magazine. ‘News’ of the Reef's demise went viral and the economic and political furore that followed was immense. Tourism industries, especially reliant on international arrivals, were impacted as potential visitors accepted the Reef's passing as fact. Politicians scampered to reassure Australians and the globe that the Reef was indeed still alive and beautiful. In the Australian public sphere, climate science deniers, alongside those advocating for climate action, collided over the impacts of global warming to Reef health. Subsequent mass coral bleaching events in 2016, 2017 and 2020 sustained at the very least, the idea that the Reef was, or was soon to be, dead. Our paper follows the idea of a ‘dead Reef’ in the context of historical and recent debates about Reef protection. Using Google Trends, we identify Jacobsen's article as the source of increased Australian and global ideation of a ‘dead Reef’. As a site of local and global environmental communication – where human relations to nature are expressed and understood - the Reef holds extraordinary story telling power. At the current junction then, the way we communicate the Reef is critical to public understanding and political action on climate change. We conclude Jacobsen's article is an example of the problems of satirical communication, serving to amplify existing conflicts and undermine efforts to foster to climate action.

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