To Boldly Go...Social Studies of Outer Space

Social studies of outer space is an expression borrowed from Lisa Messeri’s book Placing Outer Space (Duke University Press, 2016). We use this as a rubric to articulate an intellectual agenda that builds on and extends existing scholarly inquiry that is concerned with the cultural and social meanings, economics, materialities, infrastructures and politics of human activities in outer space. The social studies of outer space describes a thoroughly multi- and interdisciplinary field of research, drawing on anthropology, geography, sociology, political science, STS, and literary and cultural studies. Our research engages with ‘New Space’ economics, technopolitics, extractivism, space archaeologies, human-machine relations, waste and sustainability, research infrastructures, globalization, sociotechnical imaginaries, surveillance, and warfare. It draws on and challenges the reach of STS frameworks to critically interrogate how outer space technoscience is a contested site of innovation and investment, in particular of sociotechnical futures.     «

Social studies of outer space is an expression borrowed from Lisa Messeri’s book Placing Outer Space (Duke University Press, 2016). We use this as a rubric to articulate an intellectual agenda that builds on and extends existing scholarly inquiry that is concerned with the cultural and social meanings, economics, materialities, infrastructures and politics of human activities in outer space. The social studies of outer space describes a thoroughly multi- and interdisciplinary field of researc...     »