Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: ABSTRACT If the Cold War space race culminated in a return to Earth, at present we are experiencing a renewed interest in space. Drawing on fieldwork among people working in the space sector in Sweden, this article focuses on some of the imaginaries underpinning this resurgence and the contemporary commercialization of space. Specifically, I hone in on the envisaged potential of miniaturized satellite technology to modify how humans relate to Earth and the cosmos. As I show, the allure of smallness relies on interscalar practices whereby something that shrinks in size simultaneously magnifies its scale of significance, meanwhile pushing the terrestrial infrastructures of space into the background and figuring largeness as an outcome, not a precondition. While this is often achieved with the help of logistical metaphors that conceal the material specificities of low Earth orbit, the proliferation of orbital debris throws such qualities into relief and presents expansiveness as a challenge to be addressed at scale. If space professionals posit smallness as ground rather than figure, emergent threats to their activities dramatically flip the order between smallness and largeness, thereby signaling that to bracket scale in the analytical interest of connectivity and comparison ultimately reintroduces scale as a problem.
Source: American Anthropologist
DOI: 10.1111/aman.28081
Author: Chakad Ojani
Institutions: Stockholm University, Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study
Language: English
Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,400
Funder: Riksbankens Jubileumsfond
OpenAlex ID: W4410085105