Regular price €25.99
Regular price €26.50 Sale Sale price €25.99
A01=Mary-Jane Rubenstein
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Mary-Jane Rubenstein
automatic-update
billionaires
blue origin
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=PG
christianity
colonialism
colony
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
dystopia
elon musk
empire
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_non-fiction
eq_science
expansion
exploitation
exploration
frontier
government
growth
jeff bezos
Language_English
mars
mission
natural resources
near-earth habitats
nonfiction
PA=Available
politics
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
regulation
religion
rhetoric
rocket
salvation
science
softlaunch
space race
spacex
technology
technoscience
utopia
wealth

Product details

  • ISBN 9780226821122
  • Weight: 454g
  • Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
  • Publication Date: 25 Nov 2022
  • Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Hardback
  • Language: English
Delivery/Collection within 10-20 working days

Our Delivery Time Frames Explained
2-4 Working Days: Available in-stock

10-20 Working Days
: On Backorder

Will Deliver When Available
: On Pre-Order or Reprinting

We ship your order once all items have arrived at our warehouse and are processed. Need those 2-4 day shipping items sooner? Just place a separate order for them!

A revealing look at the parallel mythologies behind the colonization of Earth and space—and a bold vision for a more equitable, responsible future both on and beyond our planet.
 
As environmental, political, and public health crises multiply on Earth, we are also at the dawn of a new space race in which governments team up with celebrity billionaires to exploit the cosmos for human gain. The best-known of these pioneers are selling different visions of the future: while Elon Musk and SpaceX seek to establish a human presence on Mars, Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin work toward moving millions of earthlings into rotating near-Earth habitats. Despite these distinctions, these two billionaires share a core utopian project: the salvation of humanity through the exploitation of space.
 
In Astrotopia, philosopher of science and religion Mary-Jane Rubenstein pulls back the curtain on the not-so-new myths these space barons are peddling, like growth without limit, energy without guilt, and salvation in a brand-new world. As Rubenstein reveals, we have already seen the destructive effects of this frontier zealotry in the centuries-long history of European colonialism. Much like the imperial project on Earth, this renewed effort to conquer space is presented as a religious calling: in the face of a coming apocalypse, some very wealthy messiahs are offering an other-worldly escape to a chosen few. But Rubenstein does more than expose the values of capitalist technoscience as the product of bad mythologies. She offers a vision of exploring space without reproducing the atrocities of earthly colonialism, encouraging us to find and even make stories that put cosmic caretaking over profiteering.
Mary-Jane Rubenstein is dean of the social sciences and professor of religion and science in society at Wesleyan University. She is coauthor of Image: Three Inquiries in Imagination and Technology, also published by the University of Chicago Press, and the author of Pantheologies: Gods, Worlds, Monsters; Worlds Without End: The Many Lives of the Multiverse; and Strange Wonder: The Closure of Metaphysics and the Opening of Awe.