Beneath a Modern Sky: Space Technology and Its Place on the Ground Author(S): Peter Redfield Source: Science, Technology, & Human Values, Vol

Beneath a Modern Sky: Space Technology and Its Place on the Ground Author(s): Peter Redfield Source: Science, Technology, & Human Values, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Summer, 1996), pp. 251-274 Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/689708 . Accessed: 19/01/2011 11:55

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http://www.jstor.org Beneatha ModernSky: Space Technologyand Its Placeon the Ground

Peter Redfield Universityof California,Los Angeles

In delineatinga trajectoryof humanhistory, anthropology and othersocial sciences have tended to describe traditionallife in particulargeographic termswhile leaving modern experienceuniversal in scope. Studiesof science and technology,while helpingto locate and describecenters of modernpractice, have less frequentlyexplored their edges. Using a case studyof the location of theprimary French/European space launchsite in French Guiana, this article examines technologies associated with the developmentof space beyondthe atmosphereby evaluatingthe impactof rocketsand satellites on the construction of humanspace on the ground. Exploringthe social significance of a modern sky and its transformationof one tropical margin into a technical center, the question of where things are becomes one of how they are defined. The modern appears less a placeless universal center and more a moving boundary,one dividinghumans, nature, and technologyinto less stable domains.

Modernity,we are often led to believe, has no place. More accurately,it might be claimed that moderntechnology creates spaces that are not imme- diately defined by their location, togetherwith the possibility of living fully within them without knowing where one is. Amid uniformlandscapes con- jured from steel and concrete, carefully climatized and fed with waves of images floating freely overhead, coordinates of time and space become simultaneouslyuniversal and ephemeral.In the last century,railroads and rifles appearedto travel the earth with impunity, and such contemporary cousins as television and missiles acknowledgeeven fewer boundaries.An enduring general assumption-however belied in practice-lingers when discussing modernsand their things; once sufficientlyadvanced and properly

AUTHOR'S NOTE: In additionto the editor and three reviewers of this journal, the author thanksAlice Bullard,Richard and Sally Price, PaulRabinow, Marc Redfield, Lucien Taylor, and Silvia Tomaskovafor readingsand perceptivecomments on draftsof this article.The University of California,Berkeley; the CamargoFoundation; and the NationalScience Foundation(Award no. 9400155) generouslysupported the research.

Science,Technology, & HumanValues, Vol. 21 No. 3, Summer1996 251-274 ? 1996Sage Publications Inc. 251 252 Science, Technology,& HumanValues ordered,they will function in the same mannerno matterwhere they are. Is this not, after all, the magic of the modern, its most alluring or terrifying promise? Considerthe following postcard.A blue machinesits in a vaguely defined room,surrounded by greenpanels and the glow of fluorescentlight. The focus rests on the controlpanel at its center,a glowing bankof buttons,and as one's eye travels away from it the field of vision grows blurredand uncertain, sensing a roomful of motion. Nothing in the image itself conveys a sense of specific context; only the legend on the reverseside securely locates it as an interiorshot of the space centerin Kourou,French Guiana. Unlike neighbor- ing scenes along the rackof souvenirs-shots of exotic animals,people, and tourist landmarks-the card intentionally portrays something apart from conventional locality: some dynamic artificial space, free from ties to the world. In this sense, it is a veritablesnapshot of modernity,of a where that could be anywhere.And yet, significantly,the card does mark a particular site on the globe and a set of human activities embeddedin it. Indeed, the appealof the image to its potentialpurchasers is based partlyon this fact, for the room that could be in Houston,Texas, or in suburbanParis actuallylies in northeasternSouth America, on the edge of a vast rainforest. What should not be modernsometimes is; what is modernsometimes rests on what is not. Withinthe frame of one transgressingpostcard, the orderof modernityis at once establishedand undermined:a technicalcenter, there on the margin. I encounteredthe image in question on a hot and slow afternoonin the summerof 1990, duringmy initial visit to FrenchGuiana. Few people were out in the streetsof Cayenne,few doors open following the noon siesta, and, newly arrivedon a flight from Paris,slightly jet-lagged and uncertainof my surroundings,I felt strikinglyout of place. Coming upon a stationerystore near the center of town, I stepped inside to escape the sun. Instantly,the surroundingsbecame familiar:the constantclimate of air-conditioning,the orderedracks of items displayed for sale, the (comparativelydim) wash of fluorescentlight. Momentarilyrevived by this modern environment,I re- membereda purposeand examined the postcardrack for a likely means of communication.Here the unhurriedexpanse of experienceoutside lay neatly andattractively packaged in well-chosen shots:carefully framed landscapes, tropicalanimals, old buildings, and traditionalpeoples. In this assembly of postcards,the world of FrenchGuiana became manageableand consumable, simultaneouslyequal and present, ordered,separated, and-so to speak- clearlyworth seeing. Then I noticed a rack with rocketsand othermachines, attractionsof a differentorder, focused more on the future and iess on the past.Amid them I found the postcarddescribed, so remarkablyplaceless and Redfield / Space Technology 253 empty of people and yet so appropriatelyavailable to representand authen- ticate this immediateexperience of my travels. This essay examines a portion of the history of technology behind that image with an eye to where things fall on and off maps. The case at hand is particularlygermane because it involves the realization of natural space beyond the confines of the globe: the literal "outerspace" of the Space Age andconsequent redefinitions of the humansphere below. Thus this discussion revolves aroundtwin meaningsof the term"space," one thoughtin physical terms and the other in humanterms. This unavoidableword play serves to underlinethe historicityof the abstractexpanse of the universe,recalling that before the launchingof the first artificialsatellite there was no active outer space to redefine the more immediate active one below-in a sense, no modern sky above a modern ground. I would advance the claim that technologies associated with the exploration and commercializationof outer space have significantly transformedexperiences of "social space" on a global scale, exemplifiedby the redefinitionof the equatorrelative to rockets andsatellite orbits. The exampleof Kourouand the GuianaSpace Center both illustratesthis point and describes its anthropologicalsignificance, serving as a reminderthat human technologies unfold between horizons of human history and geographyand also amid narrativesof humantemporal location embedded in expressions such as "Stone Age" and "Space Age," for technologies, in addition to acting on the world, play significant roles-literal and symbolic-in efforts to differentiatebetween groups of humans inhab- iting it, both past and present. What follows, then, is writtenbetween theory and empiricalobservation, moving back and forth from general themes to a particularinstance and invoking more than one modern narrativetradition. Even as its subject is alternatelyabstract and exact, so too will be the language,for I would make my point as I have found it: betweengeneral statements, personal experience, reflection,and the words of others.' If thereis a special promise in the social study of science and technology, I believe it lies in the incongruitiesof the objects underscrutiny, their mixture of irrepressibleartificiality and natural- izing certainty.Unsettling definitions of realms social and natural,scientific practices, and technological artifacts open a back door to anthropology, returningus to an order of humansthrough an order of things. By its very existence, the space center in French Guiana negotiates the boundary of worlds, providing means of transportationacross them. In examining the context of this technicalcenter with respectto issues of place andspace, then, the goal is to dislodge discussions of moderntechnology, reorienting global and local realities, machines,and humanlives. 254 Science, Technology,& HumanValues

Place and Space, Modernity, and Anthropology

I begin with a quick furtherdelineation of what is intendedby the terms "place" and "space" and what this article calls the "placeless space" of modernity.Recently, much has been written about the promisingreturn to theoretical significance of concepts of social space, in part inspired by Foucault'sreminder that space is a conceptcentral to modernpower and that the creationof modernspace anchoredin modernplaces allows the practice of modernlife (Foucault1980; Livingstone 1992; Pred and Watts 1992). Here I follow strainsof Anglo-Americangeography and Frenchtheory, as briefly embodiedin Yi-FuTuan and Michel de Certeau,and their deceptively simple separationof categories of space and place. Tuan reminds us that human experienceinvolves movementsand pauses, the formercorresponding to our sense of space and the latterto our sense of place. "Whatbegins as undiffer- entiated space," he writes, "becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it with value"(Tuan 1977, 6). In de Certeau,this observationtranslates into a clear distinctionbetween place, as a descriptionof position, and space, as a descriptionof practice,establishing a grid on which to map a geography of science and technology.Together, space and place describe the extent of life; the particularis realized through action, in vectors of motion across boundedlocations. We know a streetor a mountainby walking it, taking its measure through time (Certeau 1984, 117). Thus space and place, while defined in oppositionto each other,can only be understoodin theirrelation- ship as stable binarycategories, linked throughexperience. Yet one centralambition of a modernistethos could be described as the erasureof locationin nature.The experienceof naturalplace is to be replaced by that of built space, given conditionswith a controlledenvironment. Streets can be standardized,ordered by type and function, and evenly paved. To maximizespeed, an idealhighway would have no hills or curvesand, as a result, wouldoffer a uniformexperience. With its uniformbuildings, the modernist city canbe locatedanywhere, positioned by chartsof reasonrather than history or by a nationalvision ratherthan a riveror coast(Holston 1989). Thus what began as a cleardistinction between human experience of mobilespaces and fixed places grows morecomplicated when considering distinctively modem settings. What develops in such situationscan be described, then, as a sense of "placeless space," a state of experiencingmobility without geographicallocality. Anthropologyis a discipline long concerned with space and place. Its preferredsource of knowledgeis the "field"(a destinationrequiring physical or psychological movement on the partof the researcher),and its preferred objectof studyis a geographicallybounded group (in the case of ethnography, often localized to the level of a village). Along certain strands of the Redfield / Space Technology 255 ethnographictradition in culturalanthropology, the rhetoricalfunction of this focus on the local scale and setting has often been to challenge overly categoricalstatements of humannature. To write an anthropologyexplicitly acknowledging modernity (Rabinow 1989; Faubion 1988), and especially one that recognizes moderntechnology (Escobar 1994), one would want to review the general narrativeof placeless space and test its analytic fabric against experience in the world, for it is precisely along this divide between local and universalwhere domains of "traditional"and "modern"find defi- nition as well as theirrespective narrations: ethnography and theory. Contrast the careful, occasionally numbing detail at the root of an ethnographic monographdescribing a traditionalsociety and its particularmilieu (say, Evans-Pritchard1940) with the wide sweep of a theoreticaldiscussion of modern existence (say, Heidegger 1977). In the one, we find exact coordinates of a locatable people (The Nuer); in the other, we find an effortless abstractionof universal concept (The Question Concerning Technology). Exceptions exist, of course, in both directions;ethnography makes certain appeals to human universals and theory to located examples. But between the two, the force of gravityis neatlyreversed: modernity floats upwardwhile traditionroots in the ground.2 By explicitly concentratingon knowledge and tools, key symbolic and materialaspects that constitutemodern life, the social study of science and technology offers a naturalgateway into the spatialdistribution of modernity. Indeed,recently there has been considerableinterest in issues of social space within its parameters(Ophir and Shapin 1991; Lynch 1991) as well as increased cross-fertilizationwith strains of anthropology(Hess and Layne 1992; Pfaffenberger1992). Borrowing a trick or two from the traditional pursuitsof tradition,the new ethnographersof the world of modernknowl- edge (e.g., Latourand Woolgar 1986; Traweek1988) have describedlabora- tories and experimentsas the key locations within it (Knorr-Cetina1992; Pickering 1992). Yet social studies of science, exuberantlyfocused on the fruitfulsite of the laboratory,have spentless time outsideits extendedbounds in the fields beyond. When ethnographicprocedures have been introduced into the social studyof science, the studyof a restricteddomain-the research center or laboratory-becomes a project framed against philosophical de- bates about knowledge claims. In such a setting, the discussion, although appealingto social context, frequentlyretains a universalrather than a local flavor.The social spaces in questionlie at the heartof modernistscience and technology, close to the great arteriesof the industriallydeveloped world. Local place recedes behind a typology of urbanizedspaces while the lived interactionsof professional practice overshadowthose of culturalpractice. Such is the vision of the laboratory. 256 Science, Technology,& HumanValues

Yet laboratoriesthemselves can be located within hierarchiesof prestige and influences-an imperialmap of knowledge-and their inhabitantsrec- ognize variantsof culturalstyle amid professionalpractice (Traweek 1992; Zabusky1995). Recentstudies of technology (e.g., Bijker,Hughes, and Pinch 1987; Galison and Hevly 1992; Williams 1993; Winner 1986) succeed in reinstallingthe materialin culture,carefully positioning tools within systems and society and large-scale scientific research.Recent histories of science (e.g., Cittadino1990; Palladinoand Worboys 1993; Osborne 1994; Pyenson 1993) recall the imperial scope of the scientific enterpriseand its colonial extensions, acknowledging the material and symbolic effects of specific technologies (Adas 1989; Headrick 1988). Indeed, recent work in urban planning reminds us that physical complexes can be-and increasingly are-designed throughoutthe world with the express hope of fostering modern technological growth, as economic engines and symbols (Castells and Hall 1994). Thus, for all their neutralizingelements, laboratoriesand machines are not simply neutral.And science and technology outside the core, probes and instrumentsoutside laboratorywalls, and machinesoutside of urban environmentsoperate amid a welter of climates and encounters, observing and influencing, acting and malfunctioning.In following such phenomena,one encountersa world of naturaland social places amid the technical space of science, remnantsof an older space of knowledge-the field-a space thatcan in turnreveal humanterrains hidden behind the tools of the laboratory;for while modernsensibilities may stress pure categories, moderntechnologies rarelykeep still, and bearingdown their specific inter- sections often leads one farafield, acrossconceptual and disciplinary boundaries and between ideas and actions (Haraway1989; Latour1987). Thus we returnto classic motions of anthropology:gyrations between situatedand general,traditional and modern,natural and cultural.The challenge, however, is to take the modernas seriously as that which it has been positionedagainst, to respectthe presentas well as the past (Rabinow 1992), to become, in Latour's(1993) terms, symmetrical,to cease insisting on the pure gravity of categories. In this way, we can turn to asking the central question at the edge of modernplace: what then, is outerspace, and how did it come to be?

Nature Reordered: Space Technology and the Globe

Exertinghimself to look out into space, man did not descry somethingentirely differentand alien; rather,what was held out to him was a cosmic mirrorof his own world, of its history and its potential.(Blumenberg 1987, 676) Redfield / Space Technology 257

In the middle of the twentieth century,outer space was still a concept defined in a single direction;one looked up throughthe sky, not down from beyond it. The earthhad but a single satellite, the moon, and the man on it was a figure of poetry,not technologicaltriumph. Beyond the atmospherelay a realm for astronomicobservation and literaryspeculation, not exploration or commercialdevelopment. But when nineteenth-centuryWestern imperial expansionbegan to unravel,ink dryingon the last white areasof its terrestrial maps, a new and final frontierwas defined, one above the emergingpolitical boundariesof First,Second andThird Worlds (McDougall 1985). Frequently described in language of colonial conquest (the inexorable "progress of mankind"now continuing beyond the confines of a single planet), this frontierreflects both a logical extension of modernistambition and its limits. Outerspace describesthat which lies beyondplace, stretchingbetween things away from the familiarglobe. To imaginethis beyond as a frontieris to invite its explorationyet is also simultaneouslyto reposition the surface already known. The earthbecomes a whole and suddenlyintimate place, one thatcan fulfill the promiseof Copernicusby travelingacross another sky (Blumenberg 1987). Moreover,thanks to the compelling presenttense of photography,it can be seen from a distanceand recognizedas a globe, thatpotent symbol in reconceivedrelations to the environment(Ingold 1993). Yet this reorientationof Earthis not solely a matterof cosmic perception or contemplation;there are significant technical consequences as well for science, politics, and economics. A vast vacuumfree of gravity requiresno pump (Shapinand Schaffer 1985), inviting scientific researchwhile holding it to new standards,those of the laboratorybeyond the atmosphere.To a properly equipped eye in orbit, the stars above and the land below grow sharper;earth, sky, and weather all canbe monitoredmore intimately (Lambright 1994; Mack 1990). Points on the globe need no longer be connecteddirectly to each otherbut can instead acquirenew significance throughtheir relation to the zone above the atmosphere.In a sense, what has been a geometry of two dimensions becomes a geometry of three, as connections are no longer restrictedto the surface sphere of the planet.A platformin space offers not only an imperialvantage point across continentsbut also a potentialbeacon between them, circumventing geographical markers on the ground and alteringtheir meaning. The foregoing sketch abbreviatesmany stories. Europeanconceptions of time and space shifted dramaticallybetween the nineteenthand twentieth centuries, as witnessed by artistic movements under various banners of "modernism,"while the establishmentof universal time zones, news services, telephones,radio and television networks,and aircraft radically altered the rateand topography of everydaylife (Kern1983; Read 1992). Yetto evoke 258 Science, Technology,& HumanValues the meaning of the Space Age, with all its powerful technological and representationalpossibilities, a certaindegree of abstractdistance is neces- sary,for while the airplaneopened the sky and moved throughit at dramatic elevations, and while the radio tower filled the air with waves (bypassing ground connections), neithermade the limits of the earthentirely visible or transparent.Space technology closed the sky again, boundedit from above and sealed it whole. Only thencould the sky become fully modernin an active technological sense, and only then could what lay beyond it become mean- ingful as space, a vast sea of darknesssurrounding a blue and green point of unified,singular human place. To illustratethis generalredefinition of human space throughthe realizationof outerspace, let us turnto the example of the developmentof satellitecommunications and the consequentredefinition of the equator. The development of satellite communicationsis one of the most fully realizedtransformations of the Space Age as well as one of the best illustra- tions of placeless space: the effortlessspread of informationacross the globe (Pool 1990). Yet the system of communicationsatellites that frees worldly connections,lifting news and advertisementsacross national boundaries and exchangingcalls between time zones, does not itself float free. Communica- tion satellites are restricted to a well-defined geosynchronous orbit that conformsto the geometryof the planet and matchesits motion. The significance of this point was first graspedin 1945 by a young British astronomer and futurescience fiction luminary,Arthur C. Clarke,who pointed out that, ratherthan rising and setting in the sky, a satellite in such an orbit would remainconstant relative to a chosen areaof the globe andthus be in a position to provide it with continuouscommunication support.3 Signals could be sent from one location within that area and then transmittedto another.With a carefully positioned set of such space platforms, signals could even be relayedbetween them and thus from one side of the world to another(Clarke 1968, 37). After the launch of SputnikI in 1957, Clarke's proposal took on a new auraof practicality,and duringthe early 1960s orbitingbundles of mirrors and circuits named Telstarand Early Bird became its fledgling realization. Just twenty years later, satellite communicationhad become an industry standardand the primaryfocus of commercial activity in space, while the artificialsatellite was a naturalizedpart of the sky. High above the equator, revolving along with it, lay a stringof essential hubs for the networksspread below. The ritual marker of mariners had become a concern of rocket engineers,transformed from a line of division on the surfaceof the globe to a newly significant range of points above it. The process of achieving geosynchronousorbit, however, redefined geographywith a new practical Redfield / Space Technology 259 physics, one with technological consequences on the ground, for to have satellites in orbit, afterall, one must first get them there. Although a large numberof nations currentlyuse satellite technology, relativelyfew possess the technologyto launchpayloads into space. By virtue of other factors of economic history, the industrialcenters of the world, includingthe originalgiant twins of the space race, arelocated relatively high in the NorthernHemisphere. In termsof achievinggeosynchronous orbit, this position is less thanideal, as the furtherone is from the equator,the more fuel must be expended to place a satellite above it. The primarylaunch sites establishedby the United States and the formerSoviet Union were both well north,the former(Cape Canaveral,Florida) at 28? and the latter(Baikonur) at 45?. The location of these sites was driven by other considerationsthan those of proximityto the equator,especially the need for sparselypopulated land to increasemilitary security and decreasethe risk of accidentalcivilian death, allowing the rockets and missiles of the cold war to fall mistakenly without mishap in preparationfor their planned trajectories.In the case of Cape Canaveral,eastward access to the ocean gave the added benefit of launchingover open water in the directionof the earth'srotation, allowing rocketsto use the planet'smomentum to help reachescape velocity. An ideal launch site for communications satellites would combine such positive attributesfound at Cape Canaveralwith a location as near as possible to the equator.This fact has not escaped the notice of certainstates located deep in the tropics,and several of them (e.g., India,Brazil, and most recentlyPapua, New Guinea)have sought to capitalize on this newfound advantageof their geography.4In so doing, they expose a technological irony of rocketry:the moreremote a location,the bettersuited it is for explosive experiments.Thus, when seeking to leave the globe, wastelandbecomes valuable and underde- velopmentcan appeara virtue.The sametropics that in the nineteenthcentury bore a sinisterreputation for disease and disrepairbeckon a key technology of the twentiethcentury. Nowhere is this reversalmore apparentthan in the place where such a launch site has been realizedmost successfully, Kourou, the example to which we now turn.

A Case in Point: European Space in French Guiana

Althoughthe United States and the formerSoviet Union dominatedearly space exploration,the field beyond the sky was not to remain theirs alone indefinitely,and a growing numberof states and corporationshave begun to seek a share of launch business. One semi-private cooperative European effort based in France,Arianespace, now even controlshalf the non-military 260 Science, Technology,& HumanValues market(European Space Agency [ESA] 1992). The Frenchgovernment has long played an eager thirdin the space race, committingearly to the idea of a launchvehicle to go with its independentnuclear deterrent and sending the test satellite Asterix into orbit in 1965. The primarymilitary launch site at Hammaguir,however, was due to be abandonedunder the terms of with- drawalfrom Algeria, forcing the Frenchto shift futureoperations elsewhere (McDougall 1985, 425). They turnedagain to anotherintegrated territory of the formerempire, this one farmore peripheral but less rebelliousand equally well positioned in terms of latitude. Part of France's first imperialexpansion, the area of the globe north of Brazil known as French Guiana (or Guyanefrancaise) has survived as a continuing segment of French overseas presence. Over the nearly four centuries in between, it has witnessed a remarkableseries of efforts to transformits low swampy land and large rain forest into a more profitable landscape.One after anotherthey failed, due in large partto poor planning and execution but also to the attributesof the chosen location. Poorly positioned relativeto tradewinds and the rest of the Frenchempire, French Guiananever received an adequatesupply of slaves to matchthe plantations of the neighboringDutch possession, and those that were established were often built on poorly chosen ground. A disastrous attempt to establish a European settler colony in 1763 gave the area a sinister reputation,one confirmedby its choice as a site for deportationduring the FrenchRevolution. Following emancipationin 1848, anemic attempts to encourage contract labor and immigrationfrom Asia largely failed, and insteadFrench Guiana was chosen as the primarypenal colony of France,a notoriousrole it would play throughWorld War II. Although the convictsrepresented only a minority of the colony's population, they cast a long shadow over its reputation, particularlyafter the highly publicized deportationof Dreyfus to Devil's Island at the end of the nineteenthcentury (Miles 1988). Other economic activities in French Guiana(subsistence agricultureand the exportationof gold, rubber,wood, etc.) never had significance on a world scale. Upon its formal integrationinto France as an overseas departmentin 1947, the area hardlyseemed destined for anythingother than a futurematching its past: a continuing role as a marginaland insignificant appendageto a European nation(Henry 1981; Jolivet 1982; Mam-Lam-Fouck1992). From the perspective of France's emerging space program, however, French Guiana offered many appealingcharacteristics as a launch site. Its low populationdensity now could be counted as an asset in addition to its northeasterncoastline, its lack of geologic or meteorologicalturbulence, and its favorable latitude.5No other location beneath French colors, after all, couldoffer a base just5? northof the equator.In 1964, aftera studyof fourteen Redfield / Space Technology 261 potentialsites worldwide,the decision was takento constructa space center at Kouroufor the use of the nationalspace program (Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales [CNES] 1994). A cooperative European effort to build a joint launcher,after briefly being basedin Australia,also moved to FrenchGuiana. An early phase of the projectunder the initialEuropean launcher consortium (ELDO) experienceda string of failures, but since the advent of the Ariane programin 1973 and the first successful launchof an Arianerocket in 1979, a refined version of the Europeanconsortium has grown to dominatecommercial satellite launches,primarily into geosynchronousorbit for commu- nicationspurposes. This time Ariadne'sgolden threadleads from the Guiana Space Centerup throughthe sky (Naddeo-Souriau1986).6 Replayingthe historicalsequence in explicitly technicalterms gives us a first point to consider:wilderness can have its uses, even for high technology. Or,more pointedly, space technology did not erasewilderness but ratherfound partsof it useful once it was properlyredefined. Unlike a factoryor railroad, which might value uninhabitedland only in termsof its potentialfor development,for its transformationinto a differentkind of productivespace, or for a destination,the spacecenter found value in the opennessof the landitself, in its marginalstatus relative to humannetworks, and in its position. Here, then, we have an example of a moderntechnology that acknowledges place.7 Yet the space programin FrenchGuiana would also entailthe construction of its own infrastructure-bridges,an expandedport, and an airport,to name a few-as well as inspiringwaves of migrationby creatinglabor markets for both skilled and unskilled workers.Engineers and techniciansarrived from Europe, and laborers arrived from elsewhere in South America and the Caribbean.Social issues tied to developmentcrept throughthe back door; the space center served as a catalyst for transformation,changing the local setting even while using certain of its physical and social attributes.As a consequenceof the space program-partly plannedand partlyunintended- Kourou grew from a quiet Creole village of 650 into a town of 14,000, the second largest in French Guiana,one with a significant migrantpopulation and many of the goods and services common to a Europeanlandscape. And French Guiana grew with Kourou.Its population,which in the mid-1960s hovered around40,000, has more thantripled since then. Even more significant from the perspectiveof local politics, muchof the growthhas come from legal and illegal immigration,particularly from Haiti, Surinam,and Brazil. GuyanaisCreoles, the largestsingle ethnic group,now no longer representa majorityof the residentpopulation. Although the space center has not been the only causal factor involved in this social transformation,it is the most prominent,and the wider influence is recognizedby both its supportersand its detractors(Bilby 1990; Jolivet 1982; Mam-Lam-Fouck1992).8 262 Science, Technology,& HumanValues

Thusthe analyticpicture before us grows morecomplicated. A technology thatsought a measureof continuingwilderness for its work,a well-positioned marginfor experimentation,nevertheless transformed that marginin the act of making it useful. To use the location, additionswere made, both to create a site adequateto the needs of the project(such as the constructionof a series of launchpads) and to createa networkof supportstructures for the technical personnel (such as living quartersand recreationareas). Furtherpersonnel not directly tied to the technicalproject arrived to provide services approxi- matingthose of a culturallyappropriate landscape for the technicalpersonnel (e.g., restaurants,schools), and, due to the remarkablelevel of investment relative to the economy of the surroundingregion, the project acquired another layer of unofficial personnel in marginalservice categories (e.g., gardening,babysitting). In this way, a site thatwas chosen for characteristics of place becomes increasinglyan epitomeof the placeless space of modernity, full of objects and people that could be-and have been-elsewhere. Like the Arianerocket it serves, the world of Kourouis an assemblageof imported parts;unlike the rocket,however, it remainsawkwardly earthbound.

Life on the Ground

Kourou,ville maudite[Kourou, cursed town]. (Graffiti on wallnear Kourou marketplace,1992) Beside the opening postcardwith its glowing machine,let us now place a series of other snapshots,these taking their inspirationfrom ethnographic observation.The specific notes from which they are drawn date primarily fromlate 1992 andthe summerof 1993. I splice themhere in an uninterrupted and flowing present,evoking the illusion of presenceand omniscience of the kind suggested by film.9 Before us we have an almostcool Decembernight on the coastal savanna. Although the light has faded too far to distinguish distant forms, in one direction stretches a green ocean of rain forest and in the other a sluggish brown sea. At the juncturewhere a slow river flows away from land lies a motley assortmentof houses in Caribbeanstyle, dimly lit by streetlightsand serenadedby insects. People are out on the sidewalkvisiting, four older men play a domino game, and a woman lounges at a corner,perhaps waiting for a lover or a customer.All the signs are in place; this is the tropics, and the pace is slow. Yet the town does not end with this tranquilimage, and moving fartheralong the shore one passes an uninviting huddle of shacks amid puddles, displaying all the requisite symptoms of squalor.Farther still and Redfield / Space Technology 263 the scene changes dramatically;huts give way to concrete apartmentblocks and then suburbanhouses, laid out with the methodicalcertainty of large- scale planning.Automobiles are parkedin driveways,large, expensive mod- els of the sort designed for cooler climes. Here and there a window flickers with the light of a television, and the streets are eerily empty. Fartherinland, a crowd surroundsa numberof air-conditionedbuses in a large parkinglot. People are talkingin small groups. Both male and female, they are dressedin casual but expensive clothes, and while they are of varied ages, the majorityof them are light-skinned.Boarding the buses with them, one is lulled by the ride down the coast, passing a small colony of rather nondescriptbuildings sprinkledamid the thick scrub. From inside the window, the architecturecould be that of post-industrialBelgium: glass, steel, and a few bright colors amid spotlights. Far beyond these architectural outposts,out amid the darkvegetation, a white pavilion casts its own pool of light. The passengers climb off the bus and walk to the pavilion; equipped with a roundof drinks,they resumetheir conversations, occasionally glanc- ing up at a series of televisions, whichdisplay shots of sternmen sittingbefore machines,or out along an open corridortoward a small, brightlylit object on the horizon, about the size of a match. The atmosphereis of a gardenparty, at the edge of some immense golf course. As a voice intones a descending series of numbersin French,the lights are loweredand the crowd falls silent, uniformlyturning to face the distantmatch. The concentrationgrows palpa- ble as the mood of the televised broadcastspreads beyond its screen. There is a flare, then a flash of light as brightclouds billow aroundthe base of the sky. A new sunrise graces the night as the rocket slowly and ponderously begins to rise above the ground.Then, as if gatheringconfidence, it climbs faster, the light diminishing even as artificial thunder begins to sound. Growingsmaller and smaller,it finally vanishesover the ocean, amidgeneral applause.The lights go up, the mood relaxes, anddrinks flow. A few minutes later,more cheeringerupts as the figures in the controlroom smile and shake hands.Both humansand machineshave performedas expected. Champagneis served to invited guests beneaththe tropicalstars, toasting the newest additionto the heavens.Now thatthe rockethas successfully risen and vanished over the horizon, checkpoints around the launch zone are opened again. At a lonely intersection,a part-timeHaitian security guard preparesto leave his post. The lastChinese store has closed,and an Amerindian checker at the Euro-supermarkethas also departedto watch her television. In a crowded nearbyshantytown, a SaramakaMaroon turns the page of his calendarfilled with rockets while a Brazilianmaid in an empty villa puts an Italian child to sleep. Somewhere above, marking the same equator but 264 Science, Technology,& HumanValues focused on anothersky, a Japanesesatellite will begin to broadcast.Europe's spaceportis working. Let us comparethis little collage to the openingpostcard with its glowing machine. Where the postcardfeatures a technology of things, we now find some humanshadows; the focus thatrested on a stable centershifts outward along the range, and the center grows blurred.Rather than a single univer- salizing object, we now have an amalgam of particularlives, imperfectly anchoredaround a technicalevent. Technologyin actionunravels along many lines, blurringthe object in question (Latour 1987). By descending to the level of particulardetail-even cursorydetail-it becomes apparentthat the launchof a satelliteinvolves farmore than a row of buttonsor a single screen, thatthe machineat the centerof the postcardis only one point in a vast array of worldwideconnections. Kourou intersects with Japan,China, and Italy as well as the neighboringrain forest. The lines attachedto every launch run throughmany patientand impatienthands, to a cellularphone in a New York broker's convertible, to a glass of beer before a French legionnaire, to a Brazilianmother's washing machine. Not all the links in these lines are equal in status,pay, or technicalefficiency. Yet separatingthem into clearlydefined categories orderedby criteriaof causalitybecomes less certainthe more one considersplace, for the controlroom is a placeless space of moderntechnology, the launch zone is a distinctive place redefinedby moderntechnology, and the people who move between them-assembling, directing,cleaning, serving,consuming-cross arraysof culturaland technical spaces negotiated between rhythms of modern technology and the tropics. A rocket launch indeed representsthe centerof this motion, but it is a centerthat materializes and dissolves ratherthan holding steady,a centerthat can only take its literal and figurativemeaning in motion. A rocket, after all, is a transportvehicle, as its engineers like to point out. Thus the clear vision of an empty control room floating in some placeless, modernspace is at once strikinglyaccurate andperfectly misleading; its distortionlies not in an invertedchoice of subject matterbut in an invertedchoice of focus. Back beyond the postcard,in the heat and bright sunlight, we again find a muddle of lives clearly-if not simply-attached to the earth. Yet perhaps this ethnographiccollage itself remains too smooth, too concentrated,too distant.Perhaps we shouldsuspect it as well, for what, after all, does it lose of place even by framingit? But then again, in focusing more closely, which particularstories to highlight?That of the engineerwho wishes he were in Florida?That of the securityguard who worriesabout his family in Haiti? That of the journalistwho commutes from Cayenne for a Kourou dateline? Different experiences of the Guiana Space Center occur with Redfield / Space Technology 265 differentfrequencies and are accordeddifferent weights, dependingon point of view. Behind the spectacularmoment of the launch(a momentpresent for all but officially witnessed by few), everyday interactionsebb and flow aroundthe space center.The distance in the earlierdescription of Kourouis not simply an illusion. A placeless place in terms of most of its architecture, the new town divides people between long avenues and cul-de-sacs with spatialunits appropriate for differentsocial classes (Jolivet 1982). As in much of FrenchGuiana, ethnic terms nearstereotype are alive in everyday speech andpractice amid the orderof society. Kourouis sometimescalled a "White" city, for althoughEuropeans may only account for perhapsa quarterof its population,they dominatethe upperechelons of the space centerand set most norms of behaviorand consumption.The "City of the Stars"is a place that evokes strongreaction, much of it negative.The local Creoleleft resentswhat they perceive as a legacy of colonialism, referringto the "CentreSpatial Europeen."Middle-class residents of Cayenne often dismiss it as a "town without a center,"and reportsin the local media identify it as an increasing locus of crime. Rotating space personnel themselves either enjoy or hate Kourou,depending on whetherthey interprettheir experience as adventure or exile. Yet I have met few people who live therefor the town itself; it is not local enough for those seeking tropicalFrench Guiana and not global enough for those seeking urbanFrance. Rather, it seems a place where lives muddle but rarelymingle, a suturebetween worlds. In a way, the launch itself reflects the presence and absence of the space centerin FrenchGuiana, for it is not necessaryto be thereto witness the event. Not only is a video feed transmitted by satellite to CNES, ESA, and Arianespace offices in Europeand elsewhere (Zabusky 1995), but it is also broadcastlive on local television. And yet a charteredplane of invited guests arrivesfrom Paris for most every launch while membersof some circles in French Guiana fish for formal invitations. Physical presence, even when technically bypassed, remains a mark of social distinction. And yet as the rocketrises, carryingits load, the signals of othersatellites are rainingdown; in enclaves of Brazilian immigrants,one finds satellite dishes set to catch soap operas and soccer from farthersouth, providingthem with alternative spectacles. Negating absence maintainsother culturaldistinctions. And yet if it is Europeanswho care most for the launches, then it is also Europeans who travel to the interiorin pursuitof the "real"jungle. What representsthe local comes to be defined in global terms and vice-versa. Just before leaving FrenchGuiana in 1993, I had dinnerwith two young residentsof Kourou,one a Frenchcitizen of Iraniandescent who had grown up in the town, the othera SaramakaMaroon (a refugee from Surinam).The 266 Science, Technology,& HumanValues first was dressed well enough to attendany polite gatheringin France-indeed he was now in universitythere-and the second wore a less transport- able arrayof clothing and sat quietly because he spoke little French. The student gestured toward his companion and said to me, "Between us, you have all of Kourou."He meant, he went on to say, that between them lay extremes of circumstances,opportunities, and histories, the one treatedas a metropolitanFrenchman and the other as a foreigneronly recently emerged from an alien forest.The distinctionbetween them was thatbetween villa and shantytown: co-existing, interacting,ever separate lifeworlds. What was unusual, the student noted-with insight and regret-was that the two of them should be not just next to each other but actually sharing a meal.'? Culturaltwists and social divides are hardlyunique to Kourou,of course; I could describe equivalents in France or the United States. But in French Guiana,they lie on the surface,concentrated and exposed.

The Modern Sky and Technological Frontiers

At last the MiddleKingdom is represented.Nature and Society areits satellites. (Latour1993, 79) Modernmachines, then, can createa sense of universality,but at differing costs. By opening the possibility of outer space and reorderingconnections on the globe, a modernsky redefines humanplace. Categoriesas distinct as heaven and earthgrow intertwinedwhile artificeextends beyond horizonsto see the world as one. Connectionsbetween what can be consideredmodern (civilization in an older rendering)and what is not (wilderness)lie exposed; certainboundaries between them blur. The same news broadcastcan be heard simultaneouslyin Parisand Kourou,while a rocketcan find a home in a rain forest. But at the same time, other boundariesare reinforcedor even more starklyoverlaid. The rocket comes and goes; it uses open space, preserving aspects of it, transformingothers along its greater trajectory.A modern outpost,even a centralone, is still not quite a centerbut ratheran element of a frontier. And while the sky above us may be thought modern and by definitionmay bindthe entireglobe as one, it does not renderan older human geographyobsolete. Thereis anotherway in which the openingpostcard is an accurateillusion. The empty centralpanel awaits command;it is free, available, open to any viewer. And yet not just anyone can be in front of any machine; modern technology requiresmodern technicians. The room that could be anywhere welcomes an inhabitantwho could be anywhere,or ratheran inhabitantwho Redfield / Space Technology 267 has been somewhereelse to learnhow to live properlywithin these glowing walls. Placeless space is not free from cultureor social norms, even if blurs location. Rather,it depends on masteryof a set of culturaland social codes that allow for the possibility of universalized,mobile experience-the rec- ognition of things one has never specifically seen before.The stationerystore in Cayenne was, in this sense, familiarto me before I enteredit, for to live a modern life is to live with such experience of dislocation, with neutralized environmentsand transported technologies. It is the abilityto imagineoneself a partof a placeless community,one extendingwell beyond the local horizon (Anderson 1991). Technicalknowledge divides those who can face screens, who speak the language of machinery,from those who cannot. And the borders of modern technical knowledge, as well as its certification, are perhapsthe most mobile andyet entrenchedof all. The final frontier,it seems, is indeed a technologicalone, if not quite in the mannerconceived by some of its enthusiasts. This invocationof the termfrontier in relationto technologyis a deliberate appeal to colonial geography-to extensions, appendages,and the space of bordersocieties. A frontieris a space of change, of boundariesand bridges, translationsand things partlyknown or understood(Certeau 1984, 127). Its images prove useful in Kourou,where the space of technical activity varies across social and naturallandscapes: actions correspondto decisions made in Europe;buildings thatcould standanywhere rise in a place chosen for its particularity;and people living in an Amazonianlandscape receive information and commoditiesdirectly from Paris.Migration occurs in several directions: skilled workers from Europe, manual labor from surroundingcoun- tries. Materialsare transportedto an open shoreline, only to be assembled and sent aloft. Below, however, rest the attendanttechnologies, the air- conditioning, computers,telephone booths, cars, and video equipment,for engineers, while they may hunt for pleasure,can hardlybe expected to hunt and gather.The last point runs deeper than irony, for in the Guiana Space Center we have the anthropologicalstory in miniature:different ends of "development"collapsing together,rain forest to rockets, the suddentransi- tion of humanity from Stone Age to Space Age. As one visiting French executive pointed out, where else can you buy wooden arrowsone day and watch a satellite launchthe next?11Irony lies on the surfacehere, but it is an irony born of technique. Beneath the swirl of unintendedencounters (and attemptsto talk about them) lies an instrumentalrationale, translating the same set of local conditions into differentlanguages of global possibilities. These encountersin turncall on otherrationales and associatedtechnologies, as productionand consumptionmingle together, as the culture of satellite extends back throughthe materialof the rocket. 268 Science, Technology,& HumanValues

In a global system of science and technology,there are many divides and gaps (Worthington,1993). The topographyof technologylies unevenly over the largerunits of politics and economics. Withinany city, along streets and even between or within houses, one finds differenttools and systems and different levels of familiarityand access. At many points, technology and naturelie in contrast(e.g., a jet landing in a jungle) or even twist together (e.g., a high-fidelityrecording of local animalsfor sale next to theirhabitat). But at certain points the connection itself becomes purposeful,redefining naturewithin a technical system. In such places, the seam of development lies bare; modernity creates clearings arounditself to define itself. These clearings serve not only as dumps for byproductsbut also as ranges for experiment and testing. The peripheral, then, is ultimately essential, in technical as well as symbolic terms. Kourou,and FrenchGuiana around it, is really less an example and more an exemplar,less representativeof a marginand more the epitome of one, a place righton the divide betweencategories of natureand society. Definitions become simultaneously the most difficult, acute, and revealing at their borders,for it is here that they are most unstable,just where they must keep still. When large technical systems are displaced-that is to say, when technicalspace is realizedin environmentssimultaneously defined as natural or non-technical-the displacementreverberates through a range of social, cultural,and technicaldimensions. Surrounded by languidtropical heat and rains, the GuianaSpace Centertries to accommodatethe rhythmsof Paris, tries to be modern-at a distance.In this unlikely(but carefully chosen) point on the planet,global technologyis revealedto be awkwardlylocal, andnature and cultureare revealed to be concepts in actionrather than stable end points on an analytic grid. Concentratingon location, one encounters motion; concentratingon placeless space, one finds a place. Questions of technology addressboth the centers and edges of modern knowledge and power. Between them, an anthropologythat remembered technologybeyond the studyof materialculture and its diffusion,and a social study of science that rememberedanthropology beyond ethnographictech- nique, would find and describe place beyond villages and space beyond laboratories.Now place, now space, now twisting away from both stable categories, this topographywould stretch over uneven terrain,shifting between naturalsettings, modern artifacts,and reinterpretationsof both, between abstractionand specificity. Enacted in practice, such topography would constitutea mobile frontier,one often hidden behind other divisions and boundariesyet essential in defining humanrelations. Conceived in these terms, the vast expanse of a modernheaven weighs heavily on the ground. Redfield / Space Technology 269

Notes

1. This essay derives from a series of researchtrips in FrenchGuiana and Francebetween 1990 and 1994, totalingfourteen months. It is partof a largerstudy of the establishmentof the space center in Kourourelative to the colonial historyof developmentin FrenchGuiana and its penal colony (Redfield 1995). Beyond personalexperience, conversations, and sources cited in the References, I acknowledgethe archivalholdings of the Centredes Archives d'Outre-merin Aix-en-Provence;the departmentalarchives in Cayenne;the EuropeanSpace Agency (ESA) libraryin Paris;brochures and other materialsmade availableby the CentreSpatial Guyanais, the ESA, the CentreNational d'Etudes Spatiales(CNES), and Arianespaceas well as the local press of FrenchGuiana and the ReutersBureau of Cayenne. 2. For a sampling of recent discussion related to spatial concerns in anthropology,see Appadurai(1986), Auge (1995), Guptaand Ferguson(1992), and Trouillot(1992). 3. The period of any orbit is a functionof altitudeand velocity. At approximately17,000 miles (28,000 kilometers)per hour,an object can breakfree from the surfaceof the earth;at an altitudeof some 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers),it has a period of 24 hours and matches the rotationof the earth.Satellites can only orbitthe center of anotherbody and, as the earthspins, an orbitat any angle otherthan directly above the middleplane of rotationwould not stay constant with the groundbelow. Thus, to maintainconstant contact with a defined region on the globe, a satellite must travel in synch with its midriff, and the equator,projected outward into space, becomes a key to communication.At extremelatitudes (e.g., those of the formerSoviet Union), a highlyelliptical orbit can be used to maximizecontact with the groundin lieu of geosynchronous stability;the greatmajority of commercialcommunication, however, takes place over the tropics (Blonstein 1987, pp. 1-9; King-Hele 1992). 4. Shiftingplans for the establishmentof tropicallaunch centers can be followed in general and industrynews stories such as those in AviationWeek and Space Technology(see also Space Policy). The journal of the Guiana Space Center itself, Latitude5, regularlymonitors active launchcompetition in the UnitedStates and Russia as well as the potentialthreats in China,India, andJapan and development of rivallaunch sites in places such as-Brazil.For historical grounding, see the collection in CNES (1972); the most interestingalternative to a tropicalland base remains a floating platform,once contemplatedby the United States, as built by Italy and as recently discussed by a consortiumincluding Russia and Norway ("Norway'sKvaemer" 1994). None, however,exists on a scale adequatefor commercialsatellite launches. For a discussion of space technology relative to development,see Wise (1990). I also thankJohn Leedom for providing me with regularclippings and local perspectiveson the New Guinea situation. 5. Exposure to the north and to the east offers an additionalboon, easing the flight of satellites launched into low polar orbit for the purpose of earth observation or scientific experiments.The evolution and changingemphasis of these technicalcriteria by those involved in the maintenanceof the centerat Kourouare themselvesof interest,as is the varyingscientific and commercialfocus of the space operationand degree of Europeancooperation. A constant from the Frenchperspective, however, is that of political controlof the land involved. 6. Some notes on jurisdiction:the GuianaSpace Center(Centre Spatial Guyanais, or CSG) has come to serve as the principallaunch site of not only the French national space agency (CNES) but the ESA as well. In 1980, a corporationnamed Arianespacewas established to marketthe new launchercommercially. Arianespace came to dominatecommercial launches in the 1980s, capturingmore than half the marketwhile succeeding in 45 of its first 50 launch attempts,placing a total of 85 satellites in orbit. The bulk of Arianespace'sbusiness lies in communicationssatellites. However, the CSG also periodicallysends earthobservation satellites 270 Science, Technology,& HumanValues into sun synchronousorbits such as those used by the FrenchSPOT system as well as other low orbit researchsatellites, test rockets, and balloons coordinatedby the CNES, giving it a total outputof more than 400 launches (CNES 1990; ESA 1992; Desobeau 1990; Naddeo-Souriau 1986). 7. I do not mean to suggest that a launch site is the only example of modem technology involving place or an open horizon.Nuclear test sites, for example, presentinteresting inverse parallels. 8. Estimatesfor percentageof direct and indirectinvestment in FrenchGuiana related to the CSG range up to 55 percent duringthe period between 1965 and 1975, a figure that drops over the next decade with the dramaticdemographic expansion of the departmentbut remains at a significant 27 percent.Direct expendituresof the departmentaland regional governments aside, the space program remains the single largest factor in French Guiana's economy (Mam-Lam-Fouck1992; Remondiereand Colmenero-Cruz1987; CNES 1988). 9. To balance the presentationthat follows, I offer these assembledsocial facts: The CSG occupies approximately900 squarekilometers of coastal land, approximately1 percent of the total area of FrenchGuiana. The primarytechnical activities conductedat the center are those of final preparationand assembly of the three launcherstages and the payload, preparingand launching the assembled rocket, and monitoringits ensuing trajectoryand performance.The CSG provides both facilities and logistical supportfor visiting teams in charge of particular payloads in different launch "campaigns,"including testing and laboratoryspace as well as housing and social services. The centerseeks to averageeight or nine payloadsa year using the Ariane 4 rocket, even while an additionallaunching area is being constructedfor its successor, the Ariane 5, and the possible (if increasinglydoubtful) future European space shuttle Hermes (CNES 1988; CSG 1994; ESA 1992). The GuianaSpace Centeritself employs approximately 850 persons, and Arianespaceemploys another250; thus the space industrydirectly employs somethingon the orderof 10 percentof Kourou'spopulation and 1 percentof FrenchGuiana's. Most of the technicaland upper administrative positions are filled by Europeans,and almost half of the center's workforceis composed of Europeanson temporaryoverseas contracts(CNES 1990). Kourou has the greatest overall numberof workers within the CNES, outrankingthe administrativeheadquarters in Paris and the satellite control center in Toulouse. In 1987, the internalbreakdown of the CSG's laborforce into official categorieswas as follows: 30 percent engineers, 24 percent technicians, 17 percent secretaries, 15 percent laborers,and 14 percent administrators.Compared to a similar breakdownfor the CNES as a whole, this distribution displaysa lower proportionof engineersto techniciansand laborers as well as a higherproportion of administratorsand secretaries. Outside of the (expansive) administrativeand secretarial categories, the workforce is predominantlymale (CNES 1991). In addition to those directly employed in technical tasks, the presence of the center has createda need for a wide range of non-technicalsupport occupations, officially estimatedat 2.1 for every direct employee of the CSG (CNES 1988). Such positionsinclude mid-level bureaucratic posts withinthe town, largely filled by Guyanais Creoles, as well as manual labor and maintenance,largely performedby illegal immigrants.In additionto the detachmentof the foreignlegion, securityguards and units of the Frencharmy are also deployed duringlaunches. Finally, one must add rotatingteams of engineersand otherrepresentatives of Arianespaceand the CSG's clients presentto oversee the preparationof theirsatellites for launch.Numbering between 200 and 400 at any one time, these missionaires stay an average of two months. The town has a numberof expensive hotels and restaurantsto cater to them, while a unit within the CSG attendsto their logistical needs and arrangesentertainment, including jungle tours. 10. For additional flavor of Kourou (and the rest of contemporaryFrench Guiana) as experiencedby Maroons,see Bilby (1990) and Price and Price (1992). Jolivet (1982) provides Redfield / Space Technology 271 a caustic descriptionof Kourouin termsof class, while Chalifoux(1987) offers an overview of factors affecting ethnic identity in FrenchGuiana and Mam-Lam-Fouck(1992) presentsa fair selection of views of the space centerfrom the perspectiveof the social historyof FrenchGuiana. 11. The quip works more richly in Frenchbecause one of the termsused for a rocketlaunch, tir, also describes the shooting of an arrow.While the artifactsin question are of the souvenir variety,meant to authenticatea jungle experience, huntingwith guns and the consumptionof exotic game animalsremain popular and controversialactivities in FrenchGuiana.

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Peter Redfield, trained in anthropologyat Harvard Universityand the University of California, Berkeley, wrote his doctoral thesis on relations between technology and naturein FrenchGuiana, penal colony to space center.He is currentlya visitingassistant professor at the Centerfor CulturalStudies of Science, Technologyand Medicine in the Departmentof Historyat the Universityof California,Los Angeles. A recentpublication appears in VisualizingTheory (edited by LucienTaylor; Routledge, 1994).