The Culture of Galactic Control

Dr Yarin Eski is an assistant professor in Public Administration at the VU Amsterdam, co-director of the Resilience, Security and Civil Unrest (ReSCU) R&I Lab, and a researcher on criminology, governance and policing. He has published on topics such as port security, arms trade, genocide and space criminology, as well as on various theoretical and empirical issues in criminology. His latest book, A Criminology of the Human Species delves into the question to which extent human beings are an inherently criminal species. He is affiliated with several academic and professional organisations and networks, such as NSCR, RUSI, SCCJR and AYA. He is also an editorial member of the Oxford Academic Policing: a Journal of Policy and Practice.

In this guest seminar, Dr Yarin Eski, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, takes us on a critical imaginary journey into how the human species’ mass exploitative and annihilative tendencies extend beyond Earth into space, based on our space imaginations. Our desire to colonise space has led us to biotechnologically enhance and redesign ourselves even more, while leaving our natural biological habitat. We are evolving further away from being human, away from home. In doing so, the human species could spread its mass extinction potential as well, affecting extra-terrestrial locations and life. We could even prevent life from happening on other planets, given our will to control asteroids that have life-seeding potential we may very well become a cosmic harm by having created and being influenced by a culture of galactic control.

This seminar is part of an open seminar series, hosted by the Centre for Criminology.