Space in the Tropics: From Convicts to Rockets in French Guiana
Peter Redfield
Abstract
Rockets roar into space—bearing roughly half the world's commercial satellites—from the same South American coastal rainforest where convicts once did time on infamous Devil's Island. This book draws from these two disparate European projects in French Guiana a web of ideas about the intersections of nature and culture. In comparing the Franco-European Ariane rocket program with the earlier penal experiment, the author connects the myth of Robinson Crusoe, nineteenth-century prison reform, the Dreyfus Affair, tropical medicine, postwar exploration of outer space, satellite technology, developm ... More
Keywords: Ariane rocket program, Robinson Crusoe, prison reform, Dreyfus Affair, tropical medicine, outer space, satellite technology, ecotourism, ecology of displacement, French Guiana
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2000 | Print ISBN-13: 9780520219847 |
| Published to California Scholarship Online: May 2012 | DOI:10.1525/california/9780520219847.001.0001 |
