The year 2007 will see the 50th anniversary of the Space Age, which began with the launching of Sputnik by the Soviet Union in October 1957. Since that time, the development of space technology has revolutionised many aspects of life on Earth, from satellite television to mobile phones, the internet and micro-electronics. It has also helped to bring about a revolution in the use of military force by the most powerful states.

Space is crucial to the politics of the postmodern world. It has seen competition and cooperation in the past fifty years, and is in danger of becoming a battlefield in the next fifty. The International Politics of Space is the first book to bring these crucial themes together and provide a clear and vital picture of how politically important space has become, and what its exploitation might mean for all our futures.

Michael Sheehan analyses the space programmes of the United States, Russia, China, India and the European Space Agency, and explains how central space has become to issues of war and peace, international law, justice and international development, and cooperation between the worlds leading states. It highlights the significance of China and India's commitment to space, and explains how the theories and concepts we use to describe and explain space are fundamental to the possibility of avoiding conflict in space in the future.

This ground-breaking book will be of great interest to students of international relations, space politics and security studies.

This title was first published in 2000. This series brings together significant journal articles appearing in the field of comparative politics over the past 30 years. The aim is to render accessible to teachers, researchers and students, an extensive range of essays to provide a basis for understanding the established terrain and new ground. This volume introduces the undergraduate to a significant body of the periodical literature on the subject of national and international security.

The challenges that space poses for political theory are profound. Yet until now, the exploration and utilization of space has generally reflected - but not challenged - the political patterns and impulses which characterized twentieth-century politics and International Relations. This edited volume analyses a number of controversial policies, and contentious strategies which have promoted space activities under the rubric of exploration and innovation, militarization and weaponization, colonization and commercialization. It places these policies and strategies in broader theoretical perspective in two key ways. Firstly, it engages in a reading of the discourses of space activities: exposing their meaning-producing practices; uncovering the narratives which convey certain space strategies as desirable, inevitable and seamless. Secondly, the essays suggest ways of understanding, and critically engaging with, the effects of particular space policies. The essays here seek to 'bring back space' into the realm of International Relations discourse, from which it has been largely removed, marginalized and silenced. The various chapters do this by highlighting how activities in outer space are always connected to earth-bound practices and performances of the every day. Securing Outer Space will be of great interest to students of space power, critical security studies and IR theory.

The challenges that space poses for political theory are profound. Yet until now, the exploration and utilization of space has generally reflected - but not challenged - the political patterns and impulses which characterized twentieth-century politics and International Relations. This edited volume analyses a number of controversial policies, and contentious strategies which have promoted space activities under the rubric of exploration and innovation, militarization and weaponization, colonization and commercialization. It places these policies and strategies in broader theoretical perspective in two key ways. Firstly, it engages in a reading of the discourses of space activities: exposing their meaning-producing practices; uncovering the narratives which convey certain space strategies as desirable, inevitable and seamless. Secondly, the essays suggest ways of understanding, and critically engaging with, the effects of particular space policies.

The essays here seek to 'bring back space' into the realm of International Relations discourse, from which it has been largely removed, marginalized and silenced. The various chapters do this by highlighting how activities in outer space are always connected to earth-bound practices and performances of the every day. Securing Outer Space will be of great interest to students of space power, critical security studies and IR theory.

The year 2007 will see the 50th anniversary of the Space Age, which began with the launching of Sputnik by the Soviet Union in October 1957. Since that time, the development of space technology has revolutionised many aspects of life on Earth, from satellite television to mobile phones, the internet and micro-electronics. It has also helped to bring about a revolution in the use of military force by the most powerful states.

Space is crucial to the politics of the postmodern world. It has seen competition and cooperation in the past fifty years, and is in danger of becoming a battlefield in the next fifty. The International Politics of Space is the first book to bring these crucial themes together and provide a clear and vital picture of how politically important space has become, and what its exploitation might mean for all our futures.

Michael Sheehan analyses the space programmes of the United States, Russia, China, India and the European Space Agency, and explains how central space has become to issues of war and peace, international law, justice and international development, and cooperation between the worlds leading states. It highlights the significance of China and India's commitment to space, and explains how the theories and concepts we use to describe and explain space are fundamental to the possibility of avoiding conflict in space in the future.

This ground-breaking book will be of great interest to students of international relations, space politics and security studies.

This title was first published in 2000. This series brings together significant journal articles appearing in the field of comparative politics over the past 30 years. The aim is to render accessible to teachers, researchers and students, an extensive range of essays to provide a basis for understanding the established terrain and new ground. This volume introduces the undergraduate to a significant body of the periodical literature on the subject of national and international security.

Michael Sheehan examines the meanings given to the balance of power over the centuries, providing an understanding of the meanings of the power principle and the key thinkers who have influenced its development.

Michael Sheehan provides a masterly survey of the varied positions that scholars have adopted in interpreting "security", one of the most contested terms in international relations, and asks whether a synthesis is possible that both widens and deepens our understanding of the concept. Sheehan begins by outlining the classical realist approach of Morgenthau and Carr and the ideas of their neorealist heirs. He then explores how the economic security approach embraces both defense economics and human security from poverty and hunger; and how environmental security links environment and security in a fundamental challenge to the international political hierarchy. Next, tackling the various postpositivist perspectives on security, all of which stem from worldviews fundamentally different from that of realism, he explains the range of feminist thought on security, the ideas of the critical security school, and the main concerns of postmodern security theory. In conclusion, revealing his own interpretation of security, he makes the case for a postpositivist conception that links human emancipation, justice, and peace.