E.T. Culture: Anthropology in Outerspaces by Debbora Battaglia
Drawing on social science, science studies, linguistics, popular and expressive culture, and social and intellectual history, the writers of E.T. Culture unsettle the boundaries of science, magic, and religion as well as those of technological and human agency. They consider the ways that sufferers of unmarked diseases such as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome come to feel alien to both the healthy world and the medical community incapable of treating them; the development of alien languages like Klingon; attempts to formulate a communications technology-such as that created for the spaceship Voyager-that will reach alien beings; the pilgrimage spirit of UFO seekers; the out-of-time experiences of Nobel scientists; the embrace of the alien within Japanese animation and fan culture; and the physical spirituality of the Raelian religious network.
Contributors. Debbora Battaglia, Richard Doyle, Joseph Dumit, Mizuko Ito, Susan Lepselter, Christopher Roth, David Samuels