Space in the Tropics - From Convicts to Rockets in French Guiana

1. Auflage 2000
ISBN: 978-0-520-21985-4
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 361 Seiten, Trade Paperback, Format (B × H): 153 mm x 228 mm, Gewicht: 585 g

Rockets roar into space—bearing roughly half the world's commercial satellites—from the same South American coastal rainforest where convicts once did time on infamous Devil's Island. What makes Space in the Tropics enthralling is anthropologist Peter Redfield's ability to draw from these two disparate European projects in French Guiana a gleaming web of ideas about the intersections of nature and culture. In comparing the Franco-European Ariane rocket program with the earlier penal experiment, Redfield connects the myth of Robinson Crusoe, nineteenth-century prison reform, the Dreyfus Affair, tropical medicine, postwar exploration of outer space, satellite technology, development, and ecotourism with a focus on place, and the incorporation of this particular place into greater extended systems. Examining the wider context of the Ariane program, he argues that technology and nature must be understood within a greater ecology of displacement and makes a case for the importance of margins in understanding the trajectories of modern life.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Redfield, Peter

Fachgebiete

• Geowissenschaften Geographie | Raumplanung Geographie: Sachbuch, Reise
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Moderne Philosophische Disziplinen Philosophische Anthropologie
• Geowissenschaften Geographie | Raumplanung Geographie: Allgemeines, Karten & Atlanten

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Preface: The Edge of the World
PART 1. ISLANDS AND DISCIPLINES
1. Robinson Crusoe, Anthropology, and the Horizon of Technology
2. History on the Wild Coast
PART 2. COLONIAL GROUND
3. Botany Bay to Devil's Island
4· The Natural Prison
PART 3· MODERN SKY
5. A Gate to the Heavens
6. The Margin of the Future
PART 4· WORLDS IN MOTION
7· Tropics of Nature
8. The Nature of Work
9· The Imperfect Equator
Notes
Bibliography
Credits
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Peter Redfield is Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina. He is the author of Life in Crisis: The Ethical Journey of Doctors without Borders.