Into the Extreme: U.S. Environmental Systems and Politics beyond Earth

(Paperback)

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The first book-length, in-depth ethnography of U.S. human spaceflight What if outer space is not outside the human environment but, rather, defines it This is the unusual starting point of Valerie Olson\u2019s Into the Extreme, revealing how outer space contributes to making what counts as the scope and scale of today\u2019s natural and social env

Reviews

"This captivating book tells the story of how 'outer space' is being reimagined and remade in the key of the environmental, as a cosmic ecosystem. Drawing on fieldwork with scientists at an undersea space-analog habitat, at NASA mission control, and at a center for space medicine, Valerie Olson artfully demonstrates how our human home planet is the scale and place from which a habitable cosmos is made and imagined."Stefan Helmreich, author of Sounding the Limits of Life: Essays in the Anthropology of Biology and Beyond

"In this seminal ethnographic study, Valerie Olson offers nothing less than a new anthropological object: the systemsolar, living, artificial, conceptualfor showing how future space is being made on the horizons of the contemporary ecopolitical moment. Traveling alongside her, we come into close contact with knowledge that unEarthed entities are uniquely placed to reveal, and with questions that closed and semi-open systems pose to timeworn discliplinary limits."Debbora Battaglia, author of E.T. Culture: Anthropology in Outerspaces

Author Bio

Valerie Olson is assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California, Irvine.