Prof. Dr. Alexander C. T. Geppert 

When and how did the world become a planet, and what does outer space have to do with it? Planetizing Earth asks to what extent our global present is a direct, if historically unpredicted consequence of space exploration, both human and robotic. Based on the notion of planetization, a term the French philosopher and Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) coined in 1946 while writing from Beijing, I ask how engineers, intellectuals, satellite infrastructures, and sociotechnical imaginaries created an unprecedented type of planetary unity during and after the Cold War. I trace cross-border flows and the flux of ideas, expertise, and ideologies not only in the United States and Europe, but also in Asia and Africa. Taking as its central conundrum the ways in which outer space and our global present mutually shaped one another, Planetizing Earth is a global history of outer space, and a spatial history of the globe. It provides an archive-based history of Earth’s surprisingly recent planetarity and offers an alternative to conventional histories of globalization.