FutureSpace Talk #7 | Julie Michelle Klinger | Extractive Labor in Extraglobal Geographies

Abstract

Contemporary space activities rely on hardware, and hardware is comprised of minerals, metals, and materials wrested from the Earth by human labor. This embeds the extraglobal geographies in extractive supply chains and labour regimes on Earth, and shapes the manner in which the immensity of the cosmos is understood and engaged by diverse publics. Drawing on several examples from around the world, this talk presents a conceptual architecture for centering the politics of labor and land use in outer space geographies, while also reflexively examining the potential epistemic violence of using extractivism as a spatial analytic to link Earthly and outer space geographies.

Bio

Dr. Julie Michelle Klinger is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences at the University of Delaware