In finding a name for our network, we aimed for terms that would articulate and be inclusive of our cross-disciplinary approaches and our varying substantive interests. Following debate among members of the network, we decided to borrow Lisa Messeri’s (2016) term ‘social studies of outer space’, in part because the expression ‘social studies’ resonates with STS more generally (such as the journal Social Studies of Science), and because it indicates that we are not astronomers or planetary scientists but interested in considering how outer space is “social” in the broadest sense of the word. However, Messeri says little about what a ‘social studies of outer space’ would actually involve in her 2016 book, Placing Outer Space. Therefore, we came to realize that one of our concerns as the network developed would be to articulate more fully what is meant by ‘social studies of outer space’.
We see social studies of outer space as describing a field of scholarly inquiry that is concerned with the cultural and social meanings, economics, materialities, infrastructures and politics of human activities in outer space. It is thoroughly multi and inter-disciplinary, drawing on anthropology, geography, sociology, political science, STS, and literary and cultural studies (see essay in Frameworks). To echo Macdonald (2007: 610), we focus on relations between the “out there” and the “down here” - how, for instance, Earth’s orbital spaces are connected to the use of national military power and to everyday life. The social studies of outer space is also concerned with investigating how people ‘derive meaning from outer space’ (Dunnett et al 2019) in numerous ways: through popular cosmology, science fiction literature and film, or pro-space exploration advocacy. We appreciate that the relation between individual and collective lives and the cosmos has been an important feature of human experiences in many different cultures (Dickens and Ormrod 2007). Outer space is also the subject of speculation and future-making (Valentine, 2012, Kilgore 2003).
Photo taken by network member Tamara Alvarez while on fieldwork.