Overview

We have entered a recent zeitgeist, the era of the ""new space age"", driven by billionaires, technological advancements, and a few dominating state powers. While the race to space may be said to offer ""new"" opportunities for ""humanity"", we ask, is it predicated on the same logics and historical patterns of the past? This question guides our approach and critical assessment of human expansionism into space. Space Expansionism and Criminology: The Emerging Terrain of Crime, Harm, and Violence offers readers a critical analysis of space expansionism and today’s race to space that has come to define our contemporary era. Taking a retrospective and prospective approach, we delve into the choices being made, the justifications being offered, and those excluded from the hegemonic discourse of the benefits of humans as extraplanetary beings. Space Expansionism and Criminology includes chapters on the historical roots of today’s space race, weaponization and realpolitik, space junk and debris, space mining and resource extrapolation, the burgeoning space tourism market, the manufacturing of space nostalgia from the 1950s through today, and efforts towards, and claims-making for, space colonization to save Earth and humanity.

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9781032645803

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Reviews

For those of you who were disappointed in the fact the amazing sci-fi series, and one of my personal favorites, The Expanse, stopped after six seasons, this book offers, if anything, criminological solace. Dawn Rothe and Victoria Collins deliver a highly original and marveling prospective criminology of space expansionism, criticizing but also moving beyond mundane criminological thinking about crime, harm and control in space. Yarin Eski, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam The entangled crises of capitalism, power, and ecology that condition and configure our social and material worlds are the most pressing issues of the day. Recently, though, a wide range of powerful actors have set their sights on a new frontier for humanity: outer space. In this fascinating new book, Dawn Rothe and Victoria Collins draw on a host of theoretical and analytical traditions in order to expand the boundaries of criminological inquiry by accounting for the vast prospective harms and crimes that we might anticipate from a new age in which the crises that plague our social worlds are no longer limited by planetary boundaries. As we accelerate towards outer space, there is an urgent need for serious scholarship that critically scans an always-expanding horizon in search of justice, and this book does just that. For anyone concerned about what it might mean to live in an age in which the harms humans have done to each other and to global ecology are increasingly being exported to the cosmos, this is essential reading. Bill McClanahan, University of Tennessee, Knoxville This pioneering examination and prospective critique by Rothe and Collins of “space expansionism” and the “emerging terrain of crime, harm and violence” make significant contributions to our understanding of The New Space Age and the future while it is presently unfolding. They accomplish this formidable task by synthesizing multiple fields of study from within and outside the confines of everyday criminology. From within -- state criminology, green criminology, and the crimes of the powerful – and from outside – material science, the race to space, and space exploration. Gregg Barak, Eastern Michigan University This book offers important new critical perspectives on space, past, present and future. By applying expansive criminological concepts to encompass the underappreciated and unintentional environmental costs of space activities, it adds a valuable new perspective on the downsides of space expansionism, as well as potentially powerful new tools to bring the space frontier into alignment with the interests of humanity and the planet. This book is an important contribution to the great debate on space. Daniel Deudney, John Hopkins University

Author Information

Dawn L. Rothe is a professor of criminology in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida Atlantic University. Her research interests and publications have a broad focus on issues of power, inequality, capitalism/neoliberalism, violence, and harms, particularly those related to crimes of the powerful. Victoria E. Collins is a professor and Chair of Justice Studies at Eastern Kentucky University. Her interests and publications focus on crimes of the powerful, state crime, white collar and corporate crime, neoliberalism, and victimology, all areas that inform the study of space expansionism.

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