Capital and the Cosmos

This book offers a new understanding of society’s relations with the cosmos. Entrepreneurs such as Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk receive a great deal of publicity, but offer unlikely and implausible visions of space tourism for the general public.  Meanwhile, asteroids are seen as ‘rare materials’ which will be extracted and used to produce untold riches for earthbound citizens.

The reality is rather different.  First, there is no evidence that owners of capital are attempting to extract ‘rare’ materials in the cosmos. The costs would be ‘out of this world’.  But capital, not governments, is determining how outer space should be used.  Capital’s investments in aerospace companies are actively determining forms of military interventions and the equipment used.  And satellite television pumps out forms of culture aimed at a global audience.  But these are being ignored and subverted by, for example, indigenous peoples.

In short, this book sets outa new understanding of our relations with the cosmos. The forces of capital are certainly powerful but at the same time they are being challenged, subverted and even overturned.

Peter Dickens teaches at the Departments of Sociology at Brighton, Cambridge and Lancaster Universities, UK.  He is the co-author of Cosmic Society (2007) and co-editor of The Palgrave Handbook of Society, Culture and Outer Space (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). His book Society and Nature: Changing Our Environment, Changing Ourselves (2006) was given an Outstanding Publication Award by the American Sociological Association.