The Panel That Wasn't

03/12/2018

Social Studies of Outer Space

Proposal for a closed panel at 4S New Orleans, September 2019

This closed panel will take the form of a roundtable to present the work of a new network of scholars engaged in critical STS work on outer space science and technology. Organized under the rubric Social Studies of Outer Space (Messeri 2016), our network that incudes sociologists, anthropologists, historians and cultural theorists, advances critical perspectives on future engagements in STS with outer space. Human spaceflight was one of the foremost technoscientific projects of the twentieth century, which promised a radical transformation of human society. While many of the promises of humans in space were not fulfilled as many in the 1960s expected,[1]  today there is renewed commercial interest in spaceflight seen for example by Space X or Blue Origin. States such as China are also investing in new space exploration programmes. STS scholarship has demonstrated limited interest in this area relative to other technoscientific fields. However, anthropologists, geographers, historians, and social scientists are beginning to address outer space in multiple ways in terms of New Space economics, technopolitics, extractivism, space archaeologies, human-machine relations, waste and sustainability, research infrastructures, globalization, sociotechnical imaginaries, surveillance, and warfare. This roundtable therefore aims to outline a new STS agenda for researching outer space and to reflect on the contribution to STS that researching outer space can make in terms of how outer space technoscience is a contested site of innovation and investment in particular sociotechnical futures.

01/02/2019

Social Studies of Outer Space 

Proposal for an Innovating STS Exhibit 

This Innovating STS exhibit takes the form of a gallery exhibit of posters that presents themes from the work of a new network of scholars engaged in critical STS work on outer space science and technology. Organized under the rubric Social Studies of Outer Space (Messeri 2016), this network incudes sociologists, anthropologists, historians and cultural theorists, advances critical perspectives on future engagements in STS with outer space. Human spaceflight was one of the foremost technoscientific projects of the twentieth century, which promised a radical transformation of human society. While many of the promises of humans in space were not fulfilled as many in the 1960s expected, today there is renewed commercial interest in spaceflight seen for example by Space X or Blue Origin. States such as China are also investing in new space exploration programmes. STS scholarship has demonstrated limited interest in this area relative to other technoscientific fields. However, anthropologists, geographers, historians, and social scientists are beginning to address outer space in multiple ways in terms of New Space economics, technopolitics, extractivism, space archaeologies, human-machine relations, waste and sustainability, research infrastructures, globalization, sociotechnical imaginaries, surveillance, and warfare. This exhibit will therefore showcase how new STS work is researching outer space and to reflecton the contribution to STS that researching outer space can make, in terms of how outer space technoscience is a contested site of innovation and investment in particular sociotechnical futures. The exhibited posters will be digitalized and made available for online archiving.