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This book offers a new understanding of society’s relations with the cosmos. Entrepreneurs such as Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk receive a great deal of publicity, but offer unlikely and implausible visions of space tourism for the general public. Meanwhile, asteroids are seen as ‘rare materials’ which will be extracted and used to produce untold riches for earthbound citizens. The reality is rather different. First, there is no evidence that owners of capital are attempting to extract ‘rare’ materials in the cosmos. The costs would be ‘out of this world’. But capital, not governments, is determining how outer space should be used. Capital’s investments in aerospace companies are actively determining forms of military interventions and the equipment used. And satellite television pumps out forms of culture aimed at a global audience. But these are being ignored and subverted by, for example, indigenous peoples. In short, this book sets out a new understanding of our relations with the cosmos. The forces of capital are certainly powerful but at the same time they are being challenged, subverted and even overturned.
If man’s next big step is to live and work in space, then what will everyone do out there that is so different from what we are now doing here on Earth? As the future of space comes into focus it is clear that profit and power are the core elements of the new space economy. This entertaining and informative book looks at human settlement in space as a mainstream business opportunity for investors, entrepreneurs and far-sighted individuals seeking to secure their place in the innovative commercial space sector. Dr. Jack Gregg presents a unique 5-phase development roadmap that shows how space will grow from a frontier economy to a mature integrated market. Written in simple, non-technical language, this book answers such questions as: • What is the new industrial space economy? • What are the challenges and roadblocks on the way to a robust space economy? • How will the rapid growth of the new space economy impact commerce back on Earth? • How can one best invest in profitable space-related enterprises? The Cosmos Economy is for readers who hope to be better equipped and more informed about the new space economy; and Investors, entrepreneurs, and futurists who wants to learn how to take part in the business opportunities of the new high frontier of commercial space.
As World War II intrudes upon their home, three young friends risk everything for freedom, love, and a chance at a better life. On October 28th, 1940, Mussolini provides Greek Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas with an ultimatum: either allow Axis forces to occupy their country, or face war, and Greece's response is swift. "Oxi!" they say. "No!" In a small village nestled against the radiant waters of the Aegean Sea, we find Alexei, the son of a local fisherman, and his best friend Costa, who were both born on the same night eighteen years earlier and have been like brothers ever since, though now, like all the other young men in their village and throughout Greece, they will leave their homes to bravely fight for their country. But before they go, Alexei asks Philia, the girl that he's loved his entire life, to marry him, which sets into motion the events which will change the lives of these three and their family and friends forever, and begins an epic and unforgettable story of courage, survival, sacrifice, the strength of the human spirit, and of a love and friendship that will echo across time and generations. A spellbinding novel and sweeping romance that performs the remarkable feat of creating action-packed scenes, characters that we care deeply about, and revealing in vivid detail the untold true story of how Greece helped the Allies to win World War II, Once We Were Here is an unforgettable tale that pays tribute to the brave men and women who fought and gave everything for their country, for each other, and for freedom.
Space weaponry, satellite surveillance and communications, and private space travel are all means in which outer space is being humanized: incorporated into society’s projects. But what are the political implications of society not only being globalized, but becoming ‘cosmic’? Our ideas about society have long affected, and been affected by, our understanding of the universe: large sections of our economy and society are now organized around humanity’s use of outer space. Our view of the universe, our increasingly ‘cosmic’ society, and even human consciousness are being transformed by new relations with the cosmos. As the first sociological book to tackle humanity’s relationship with the universe, this fascinating volume links social theory to classical and contemporary science, and proposes a new ‘cosmic’ social theory. Written in a punchy, student-friendly style, this timely book engages with a range of topical issues, including cyberspace, terrorism, tourism, surveillance and globalization.
This is the first comprehensive, multi-disciplinary work on the emergent phenomenon of space tourism. It is written by leading specialists and covers a wide spectrum of topics including space history and technology, the environmental, social, and legal aspects of the development of a future space tourism industry, and space tourism marketing.
Christians have never constituted one percent of Japan’s population, yet Christianity had a disproportionately large influence on Japan’s social, intellectual, and political development. This happened despite the Tokugawa shogunate’s successful efforts to criminalize Christianity and even after the Meiji government took measures to limit its influence. From journalism and literature, to medicine, education, and politics, the mark of Protestant Japanese is indelible. Herein lies the conundrum that has interested scholars for decades. How did Christianity overcome the ideological legacies of its past in Japan? How did Protestantism distinguish itself from the other options in the religious landscape like Buddhism and New Religions? And how did the religious movement’s social relevance and activism persist despite the government’s measures to weaken the relationship between private religion and secular social life in Japan? In Church Space and the Capital in Prewar Japan, Garrett L. Washington responds to these questions with a spatially explicit study on the influence of the Protestant church in imperial Japan. He examines the physical and social spaces that Tokyo’s largest Japanese-led congregations cultivated between 1879 and 1923 and their broader social ties. These churches developed alongside, and competed with, the locational, architectural, and social spaces of Buddhism, Shinto, and New Religions. Their success depended on their pastors’ decisions about location and relocation, those men’s conceptualizations of the new imperial capital and aspirations for Japan, and the Western-style buildings they commissioned. Japanese pastors and laypersons grappled with Christianity’s relationships to national identity, political ideology, women’s rights, Japanese imperialism, and modernity; church-based group activities aimed to raise social awareness and improve society. Further, it was largely through attendees’ externalized ideals and networks developed at church but expressed in their public lives outside the church that Protestant Christianity exerted such a visible influence on modern Japanese society. Church Space offers answers to longstanding questions about Protestant Christianity’s reputation and influence by using a new space-centered perspective to focus on Japanese agency in the religion’s metamorphosis and social impact, adding a fresh narrative of cultural imperialism.
At the turn of the last millennium, a powerful Native American civilization emerged and flourished in the American Midwest. By A.D. 1050 the population of its capital city, Cahokia, was larger than that of London. Without the use of the wheel, beasts of burden, or metallurgy, its technology was of the Stone Age, yet its culture fostered widespread commerce, refined artistic expression, and monumental architecture. The model for this urbane world was nothing less than the cosmos itself. The climax of their ritual center was a four-tiered pyramid covering fourteen acre rising a hundred feet into the sky—the tallest structure in the United States until 1867. This beautifully illustrated book traces the history of this six-square-mile area in the central Mississippi Valley from the Big Bang to the present. Chappell seeks to answer fundamental questions about this unique, yet still relatively unknown space, which was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982. How did this swampy land become so amenable to human life? Who were the remarkable people who lived here before the Europeans came? Why did the whole civilization disappear so rapidly? What became of the land in the centuries after the Mississippians abandoned it? And finally, what can we learn about ourselves as we look into the changing meaning of Cahokia through the ages? To explore these questions, Chappell probes a wide range of sources, including the work of astronomers, geographers, geologists, anthropologists, and archaeologists. Archival photographs and newspaper accounts, as well as interviews with those who work at the site and Native Americans on their annual pilgrimage to the site, bring the story up to the present. Tying together these many threads, Chappell weaves a rich tale of how different people conferred their values on the same piece of land and how the transformed landscape, in turn, inspired different values in them-cultural, spiritual, agricultural, economic, and humanistic.
Drawing on a wealth of primary materials detailing the city's history, customs, and urban construction as well as on recent work in Chinese history, culture, and religion, Yinong Xu examines characteristics of building and transformation in pre-modern Suzhou, characteristics that, while particular to the city's own historical development, reflect or were determined by factors representative of China's urban history in general.".
This is the first comprehensive, multi-disciplinary work on the emergent phenomenon of space tourism. It is written by leading specialists and covers a wide spectrum of topics including space history and technology, the environmental, social, and legal aspects of the development of a future space tourism industry, and space tourism marketing.
Conventional theories of capitalism are mired in a deep crisis: after centuries of debate, they are still unable to tell us what capital is. Liberals and Marxists both think of capital as an ‘economic’ entity that they count in universal units of ‘utils’ or ‘abstract labour’, respectively. But these units are totally fictitious. Nobody has ever been able to observe or measure them, and for a good reason: they don’t exist. Since liberalism and Marxism depend on these non-existing units, their theories hang in suspension. They cannot explain the process that matters most – the accumulation of capital. This book offers a radical alternative. According to the authors, capital is not a narrow economic entity, but a symbolic quantification of power. It has little to do with utility or abstract labour, and it extends far beyond machines and production lines. Capital, the authors claim, represents the organized power of dominant capital groups to reshape – or creorder – their society. Written in simple language, accessible to lay readers and experts alike, the book develops a novel political economy. It takes the reader through the history, assumptions and limitations of mainstream economics and its associated theories of politics. It examines the evolution of Marxist thinking on accumulation and the state. And it articulates an innovative theory of ‘capital as power’ and a new history of the ‘capitalist mode of power’.