Marking territory in the infinite

Forum World Affairs

Marking territory in the infinite: Speculating on the implications of flags in space

"The colonialist tradition of raising your flag within a foreign land in order to lay claim has signaled ownership and expedited the extraction of resources for imperial powers."

A student project proposed created a universal flag that would represent the entirety of planet Earth, but in creating the this project, they likely did not consider the theoretical interplanetary politics in mind. As an anthropologist interested in outer space, I was immediately struck by the implications of taking such a flag off of our planet—further solidifying in my mind the argument that anthropology has a justifiable place in every discipline!

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