In delineating a trajectory of human history, anthropology and other social sciences have
tended to describe traditional life in particular geographic terms while leaving modem
experience universal in scope. Studies of science and technology, while helping to locate
and describe centers of modern practice, have less frequently explored their edges. Using
a case study of the location of the primary French/European space launch site in French
Guiana, this article examines technologies associated with the development of space
beyond the atmosphere by evaluating the impact of rockets and satellites on the construction of human space on the ground. Exploring the social significance of a modem sky
and its transformation of one tropical margin into a technical center, the question of
where things are becomes one of how they are defined. The modem appears less a
placeless universal center and more a moving boundary, one dividing humans, nature,
and technology into less stable domains.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Adas, Michael.1989Machines as the measure of men: Science, technology and ideologies of Western dominance. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
2.
Anderson, Benedict.1991 [1983]. Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso.
3.
Appadurai, Arjun.1986. Theory in anthropology: Center and periphery. Comparative Studies in Society and History28:356-74.
4.
Augé, Marc.1995[1992]. Non-places: Introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity. London: Verso.
5.
Bijker, Wiebe E., Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor Pinch, eds. 1987. The social construction of technological systems: New directions m the sociology and history of technology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
6.
Bilby, Kenneth M.1990. The remaking of the Aluku: Culture, politics and Maroon identity in French South America. Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University.
7.
Blonstein, Larry.1987Communication satellites: The technology of space communications . London: Heinemann.
8.
Blumenberg, Hans.1987. The genesis of the Copernican world. Cambridge, MA. MIT Press.
9.
Castells, Manuel, and Peter Hall.1994. Technopoles of the world: The making of 21st century industrial complexes. London: Routledge.
10.
Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales.1972. Les bases de lancement/launching bases. Conference proceedings, Kourou, French Guiana, 22-28 November.
11.
—. 1988. La Guyane et l'espace. CNES/CSG informational brochure.
12.
—. 1990. Centre Spatial Guyanais: Port Spatial de l'Europe. Pamphlet.
13.
—. 1991. Chiffres. CNESQUISPASSE? 65 (April): 14.
14.
————. 1994. 1964: Conception et naissance du Centre Spatial Guyanais . Press release of official history of CNES.
15.
Centre Spatial Guyanais.1994. Ariane en Guyane. Informational brochure.
16.
Certeau, Michel de.1984. The practice of everyday life. Berkeley : University of California Press.
17.
Chalifoux, Jean-Jacques.1987. L'identité ethnique: Questions pour la Guyane. Cayenne, French Guiana: CRESTIG
18.
Cittadino, Eugene.1990. Nature as the laboratory: Darwinian plant ecology m the German empire, 1880-1900Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
19.
Clarke, Arthur C.1968 [1945]. Extra-terrestrial relays: Can rocket stations give world-wide coverage? Reprinted in The beginnings of satellite communications, edited by J. R. Pierce, 37-43. San Francisco: San Francisco Press.
20.
Desobeau, Jean-Michel.1990. CSG: Guiana Space Center. In La documentation guyanais . Cayenne, French Guiana: Saga.
21.
Escobar, Arturo.1994. Welcome to Cyberia: Notes on the anthropology of cyberculture . Current Anthropology35:211-31.
22.
European Space Agency.1992. Ariane: A European success story. Promotional brochure.
23.
Evans-Pritchard, E.E.1940. The Nuer: A description of the modes of livelihood and political institutions of a Nilotic people. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
24.
Faubion, James.1988. Possible modernities. Cultural Anthropology3:365-78.
25.
Foucault, Michel.1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings , edited by C. Gordon.New York: Pantheon Books.
26.
Galison, Peter, and Bruce Hevly.1992. Big science: The growth of large scale research. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
27.
Gupta, Akhil, and James Ferguson.1992. Beyond "culture": Space, identity and the politics of difference. Cultural Anthropology7:6-23.
28.
Haraway, Donna.1989. Primate visions: Gender, race and nature in the world of modern science. New York: Routledge
29.
Headrick, Daniel R.1988. The tentacles of progress: Technology transfer in the age of imperialism, 1850-1940. New York: Oxford University Press
30.
Heidegger, Martin.1977. The question concerning technology and other essays. New YorkHarper & Row.
31.
Henry, Arthur1981 [1950]. La Guyane: Son histoire, 1604-1946Cayenne, French Guiana Guyane Presse Diffusion.
32.
Hess, David J., and Linda L. Layne, eds 1992Knowledge and society, vol 9 The anthropology of science and technology. Greenwich, CT. JAI
33.
Holston, James.1989The modernist city: An anthropological critique of BrasíliaChicago: University of Chicago Press.
34.
Ingold, Tim1993. Globes and spheres: The topology of environmentalism. In Environmentalism: The view from anthropology, edited by Kay Milton, 31-42. London: Routledge.
35.
Jolivet, Marie-José.1982. La question créole. Essai de sociologie sur la guyane française Pans Éditions de l'Office de la Recherche Scientifique et Technique Outre-Mer
36.
Kern, Stephen.1983. The culture of time and space, 1880-1918Cambridge, MAHarvard University Press.
37.
King-Hele, Desmond.1992. A tapestry of orbits. Cambridge, England: Cambridge Universtiy Press.
38.
Knorr-Cetina, Karin.1992. The couch, the cathedral and the laboratory: On the relationship between experiment and laboratory in science. In Science as practice and culture, edited by Andrew Pickering , 113-38. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
39.
Lambright, W. Henry.1994. The political construction of space satellite technology Science, Technology, & Human Values19:47-69.
40.
Latour, Bruno.1987. Science in action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
41.
—. 1993. We have never been modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
42.
Latour, B., and S. Woolgar.1986 [1976]. Laboratory life: The construction of scientific facts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
43.
Livingstone, David N.1992. The geographical tradition: Episodes in the history of a contested enterprise. Oxford, England: Blackwell.
44.
Lynch, Michael.1991. Laboratory space and the technological complex: An investigation of topical contextures. Science in Context4:51-78.
45.
Mack, Pamela E.1990. Viewing the earth: The social construction of the LANDSAT satellite system. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
46.
Mam-Lam-Fouck, Serge.1992. Histoire de la Guyane contemporane, 1940-1982: Les mutations économiques, sociales et politiques. Paris: Éditions Caribéennes.
47.
McDougall, Walter A.1985.... The heavens and the earth: A political history of the Space Age. New York: Basic Books .
48.
Miles, Alex.1988. Devil's Island: Colony of the damned. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press.
49.
Naddeo-Souriau, Isabelle.1986Artane: Le pari européen. Paris: Éditions Hermé.
50.
Norway's Kværner goes into space. 1994. Reuters (wire service , 21 June (dateline: Oslo).
51.
Ophir, Adi, and Steven Shapin.1991The place of knowledge. A methodological survey. Science in Context4:3-22
52.
Osborne, Michael A.1994. Nature, the exotic and the science of French colonialism . Bloomington : Indiana University Press.
53.
Palladino, Paolo, and Michael Worboys1993Science and imperialism. Isis84:91-102.
54.
Pfaffenberger, Bryan.1992. Social anthropology of technology. Annual Review of Anthropology21:491-516.
55.
Pickering, Andrew, ed 1992. Science as practice and culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
56.
Pool, Ithiel de Sola.1990. Technologies without boundaries: On telecommunications in a global age, edited by Eli M. Noam.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
57.
Pred, Allan, and Michael Watts.1992. Reworking modernity: Capitalisms and symbolic discontent. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
58.
Price, Richard, and Sally Price.1992. Equatoria. New York : Routledge.
59.
Pyenson, Louis.1993. Civilizing mission: Exact sciences and French overseas expansion, 1830-1940. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
60.
Rabinow, Paul.1989. French modem: Norms and forms of the social environment . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
61.
—. 1992Severing the ties: Fragmentation and dignity in late modernity (on the case of John Moore vs Regents of University of California. In Knowledge and society, vol. 9: The anthropology of science and technology , edited by David Hess and Linda Layne, 169-87. Greenwich, CT: JAI.
62.
Read, Donald.1992. The power of the news. The history of Reuters, 1849-1989 . Oxford, England: Oxford University Press
63.
Redfield, Peter.1995. Space in the tropics: Developing French Guiana, penal colony to launch site. Ph.D. diss., University of California , Berkeley.
64.
Remondiere, André, and Michel Colmenero-Cruz .1987. Impact du C.S.G. sur le contexte economique de la Guyane. CNES/CSG working document , July.
65.
Shapin, Steven, and Simon Schaffer.1985. Leviathan and the air-pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the experimental lifePrinceton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
66.
Traweek, Sharon.1988. Beam times and life times: The world of high-energy physicists . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
67.
—. 1992. Big science and colonialist discourse: Building high-energy physics in Japan. In Big science: The growth of large scale research, edited by Peter Galison and Bruce Hevly, 100-28. Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press.
68.
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph.1992. The Caribbean region: An open frontier in anthropology . Annual Review of Anthropology21:19-42
69.
Tuan, Yi-Fu.1977. Space and place: The perspective of experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
70.
Williams, Rosalind.1993. Cultural origins and environmental implications of large technological systems. Science in Context6:377-403.
71.
Winner, Langdon.1986. The whale and the reactor: A search for limits in the age of high technology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
72.
Wise, Steve.1990. Space and national development: Are Brazil and Argentina examples? Technology in Society12:79-89.
73.
Worthington, Richard.1993. Introduction: Science and technology as a global system . Science, Technology, & Human Values18:176-85.
74.
Zabusky, Stacia.1995. Launching Europe: An ethnography of European cooperation m space science. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
