Ethnographies of Outer Space

Ethnographies of Outer Space 

Methodological Opportunities and Experiments

1 September 2022 - 2 September 2022

Palazzo di Sociologia - Via Verdi 26, Trento

Italy

Keynote speakers 

Stefan Helmreich (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Zara Mirmalek (NASA, Bay Area Environmental Research Institute) 

Valerie Olson (University of California, Irvine)

An Anthropologist on Mars (1995) is a well-known book by the neurophysiologist Oliver Sacks. Contrary to what its title suggests, the book is neither about anthropology nor about the Red Planet. It is, in fact, a collection of seven essays on the paradoxical circumstances in which those affected by particular neurological conditions find themselves. Still, the juxtaposition of the words “anthropology” and “Mars” conveys a sense of inaccessibility that – for a long time – was familiar to the ethnographer approaching fields of inquiry related to space science and technology: rather like the protagonists in Sacks seven tales, the social sciences and the humanities were (often implicitly) deemed unfit to travel to such unimaginable lands, purportedly devoid of any sociality or humanness. 

Only in the early 2000s a number of seminal studies broke through the glass ceiling. Turning their gaze toward the skies, ethnographers showed how scientific and technological practices related to outer space cannot help but be imbued with the very terrestrial logics of power and knowledgemaking. 

Today we witness a flourishing of sociological, anthropological, historical, philosophical, and geographical studies on outer space. Time is ripe to reflect on how this multifaceted field has challenged and enriched different research practices and methodologies. On the one hand, space exploration is an inherently human enterprise, and as such it lends itself to social and anthropological inquiry. On the other hand, this domain presents unique features: the sites in which social action is articulated are at once remote, imagined, global and/or exquisitely local, manipulated through analogies, physically experienced, technologically mediated, out of reach, and collectively constructed. 

This intrinsically plural character presents a methodological challenge for the social sciences and the humanities. How to approach space within different theoretical and methodological frameworks? How does this field of inquiry engender interdisciplinary “contaminations”? How does it redefine the ethnographic encounter? Ultimately, this conference seeks to explore how the sense of impossibility, inaccessibility and paradox that has long been a hallmark of social studies of outer space is becoming fertile soil for novel, far-reaching and critically engaged earthly ethnographies.

Program workshop "Ethnographies of outer space" (PDF | 428 KB)

Registration: https://webmagazine.unitn.it/en/evento/sociologia/109933/ethnographies-of-outer-space

Anthropology Off Earth - Call for papers

Anthropology Off Earth
How Terrestrial Exploration and Scientific Imagination 
Shape Our Relation to Outer Space and Extraterrestrial Life

Paris, 4-5 June 2019 (Collège de France / Observatoire de Paris)

Organisers: Perig Pitrou (CNRS/Collège de France/Paris Sciences et Lettres University), Régis Ferrière (École Normale Supérieure/Paris Sciences et Lettres University & University of Arizona), Istvan Praet (University of Roehampton, London).

Organisers of the doctoral and post-doctoral session: Joffrey Becker (IRIS-OCAV/Paris Sciences et Lettres University), Elsa De Smet (IRIS-OCAV/Paris Sciences et Lettres University).

Keynote speakers: Valerie Olson (UC Irvine), Lisa Messeri (Yale University).

Images: Barchan dunes on Earth (top left) and on Mars (top right); Biosphere 2 near Oracle, Arizona (credits: George Steinmetz/ HiRISE, MRO, University of Arizona, NASA)

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Call for Papers

Application deadline: April 15th  2019

(send presenter’s information, title and 150-word abstract to ocavbioarti@gmail.com)

Decisions : April 30th 2019

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In the present day and age, space exploration can no longer be conceived merely as ‘rocket science’. Surely, aeronautic engineering, robotic probes and space telescopes continue to play an important role, and so does in-situ research by human astronauts who have conducted a number of experiments designed to advance scientific knowledge of life in extraterrestrial conditions. But space observation and exploration can now be framed in the emerging fields of astro- and exobiology – what life could be in non-Terrestrial environments–, and the perspective of human and non-human Terrestrial life to be established in outer space, on other planets, or in spacecraft. Think of NASA astronaut Don Pettit’s ‘space zucchini’, whose development he recorded in a popular public diary, or of the equally captivating micro-gravitational adventures of the jumping spiders or ‘spidernauts’ on board of the International Space Station!

But what remains insufficiently recognised is that our knowledge of outer space and its potential inhabitants is gained here on Earth, based on how we study our own planet and life that inhabits it, including our societies. Astrobiologists and planetary scientists are nowadays experimenting with elaborate, lab-based simulations of entire planets and are modeling hypothetical martian ecosystems and alien biospheres in ever more sophisticated ways. The Biosphere 2 facility in Arizona, which was conceived as an alternative Earth-like mini-planet, pioneered this trend. Beyond their laboratories, scientists conduct fieldwork in specific locations referred to as extreme environments or analogue sites, which serve as proxies for what might happen on planetary bodies elsewhere. Andean highland lakes thus become tools to comprehend early, ‘wet’ Mars for example. And the extremophile organisms that inhabit them are used to model alien life forms. These practices beg the general question: how does our Earth-centric perspective on the universe influences our sense of the living beyond Earth? In particular, is scientific creativity – the driver of science progress – enough to study life as it might be, and living in outer space as we will do it, enough? Is it to be enhanced with some form of scientific imagination, and what should that be?

The workshop proposes to address such fundamental questions by examining  practices of planetary modeling and analogue research from a social scientific perspective. For space exploration, at its most innovative, involves more than gathering new empirical data about the cosmos. It is not just about collating interesting observational discoveries, but also about reconsidering modern science’s set ways of imagining the cosmos. By focusing on the interface between rigorous observation and conceptual imagination, this workshop aims to trace the contours of an anthropology off Earth. The call for papers is open for anthropologists, STS scholars, historians and philosophers of science and, more generally, for all social scientists interested in outer space as well as for planetary scientists and astrobiologists interested in the conceptual and imaginative dimensions of space exploration.

The Closed Ecologies of Cyber-Physical Systems: A Case Study (Doc-Postdoc Session)

BIOCOSMOS: Our Sense of Place, Our Sense of Life in the Universe, PSL Research University / IRIS-OCAV, University of Arizona, Biosphere 2, Oracle (AZ) - Feb 1st 2018

The workshop was organized by the OCAV (Origin and Conditions of Appearance of Life) program at Paris Sciences-Lettres Research Université and the CNRS-ENS-Arizona International Center for Interdisciplinary and Global Environmental Studies (iGLOBES). It aimed at breaking through disciplinary boundaries by bringing together a mix of astronomers, Earth scientists, ecologists, and anthropologists to discuss how our understanding of life and nature as integrated systems advances and evolves as we become able to assemble and control complex artificial ecosystems on Earth, prepare to send and use such ecosystems on the Moon and Mars, search for alien life and ecosystems on other planets and planetary bodies, and push the boundaries of our exploration of the distant universe.

See also: http://www.cnrs-univ-arizona.net/welcome/news-events/biocosmos-workshop