Jason Beery

M.S., Geography, Pennsylvania State University, 2007.
Supervisors: James McCarthy and Lorraine Dowler.

B.A. (honors), International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, 2004.

Constellations of power: the state, capital and nature in the uneven production of outer space.

Supervisors: Erik Swyngedouw and Noel Castree.

Political ecology, political economy, environmental governance, urban geography.

My current research is on the political economy/ecology of outer space. I examine the production of outer space through the international legal regime that governs it and which is often understood as creating outer space as a “global commons.” My research questions this perspective by analyzing the ways in which the laws governing these “global” spaces and “resources” enable processes of political and capital accumulation to continue. It asks two central questions: First, how does the production/construction of “global commons” and “global resources” enable political and capital accumulation to occur through trans- and extraterritorial resources existing in trans- and extraterritorial spaces? To answer this question, the research focuses on the development of the legal regime governing outer space and the uneven outcomes of human activity in outer space. In so doing, it hopes to answer the second, more concrete, question: despite treaties identifying outer space as “the province of mankind” and as the “common heritage of mankind”; activity in outer space as to be conducted “for the benefit and in the interests of all countries”; and outer space as “not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or any other means,” why do disparate activities in and benefits from outer space result?  This focus on global spaces and resources not only challenges affirmative cosmopolitan assumptions about “global commons” and “global resources,” it also asks basic questions of who gets to use and benefit or profit from spaces and “resources” beyond state borders and of how such decisions are made. It thereby considers the tension between certain biophysical materialities and existing spatial organizations of political and economic power (i.e. the division of Earth into political territories).

There are two central parts to this research. One part examines the United Nations and the International Telecommunication Union negotiations over outer space and orbits, focusing on particular aspects of the treaties and debates and how they relate to the production/construction of the space and resources of outer space. The other part, which compliments the first part by providing greater depth to the chain of processes at work, analyzes the debates and rationales within the state over development of United States policy in these negotiations and in the debates over the signing and ratification of the international treaties after their international negotiation. I draw from literature on legal geography, the coproduction of socionatures, imperialism, state theory, political economy and political ecology.