Fellow 2022-2023EMILY RAY
Term: 01/2023 – 04/2023
Ph.D., Planning, Governance, and Globalization, Virginia Tech (2013)
MPA, Virginia Tech (2009)
B.A., Political Science & B.A. History, University of Oregon (2005)
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:
Associate Professor, Dept. of Political Science, Sonoma State University (2021-current)
Assistant Professor & MPA Coordinator, Dept. of Political Science, Sonoma State University (2015-2021)
Lecturer, Dept. of Politics and International Affairs, Northern Arizona University (2013-2015)
RELATED PUBLICATIONS:
• [Under contract] Kirsch, R. E. & Ray, E. (2022). Worst case scenario: The politics of prepping in America. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
• Ray, E. (2021). “Neoliberalism and Prepping for Disaster.” New Political Science, DOI: 10.1080/07393148.2021.1906584
• Ray, E. & Parson, S. (2020). “Drill Baby, Drill: Labor, accumulation, and the sexualization of resource extraction.” Theory and Event, Vol.23, No.1, pp.248-70
• Ray, E. & Parson, S. (2020). “Star Power: Outer space mining and the metabolic rift.” Routledge Focus Series on Environment and Sustainability. Routledge.
INTERVIEW WITH CAPAS FELLOW EMILY RAY
Building the Celestial Bunker and Securing Survival through Outer Space Colonization
In the work Emily plans to accomplish at the Centre, she theorizes that the imperial designs of the US, as it draws justification from apocalyptic fears, creates a bunker society that reproduces the security measures of the state in the family home. This includes security systems, provisioning for disaster, and maintaining privacy about one’s “state secrets,” or defenses and preparation plans from neighbors and acquaintances. Emily will analyze how the bunker society is shaped by and articulated through market forces that are in relation to the state, not as a replacement to it. She engages neoliberalism as another iteration of the long-standing relationship between state and capital wherein the state works tightly with the institutions of capital to create trade, legal, and cultural frameworks for capital growth into new sectors, or to develop existing ones, like personal security, the modern bunker market, and other market-based opportunities to survive worsening conditions on the planet. Her research will look specifically at outer space colonization as an extension of bunker politics as another territorial grab to claim, protect, and use for protection against worsening climate conditions on earth.