Ethnographic Approaches to Outer Space

Psychologists have been called upon in recent years to look into the psychological effects on humans, after being in space for prolonged periods, as both government and private corporations work towards making the idea of living in space for long periods of time a reality. Over the course of a few decades, psychological research into “analogue sites” here on earth, simulations, and astronauts living and working in orbit has started to show how humans are affected by such environments. In general, findings show the potential for conflict or emotional deterioration during long-term isolated periods, but it may have more to do with people’s perceptions of their environment more so than the environment itself. Even still, living in isolated and confined areas can cause stress and problematic behaviours that may interfere with productivity and relationships. Communication, homesickness, and habitat design also become important factors in the success of long-term missions in space. Several factors pertaining to culture such as nationality, gender roles and sexual orientation become important aspects to learn about in order to work harmoniously with others in a long-term space environment and to avoid any misunderstandings. The broad definition of culture also becomes an important aspect of living and working off world. Most researchers are aware of the problems when studying culture such as pinpointing the parts of culture that are causing such issues. Therefore, it is suggested that future research defines culture more clearly while learning more in depth information regarding participants’ ideas of their own identities. This independent study will explore the psycho-social issues of living in isolated and confined spaces, culture and gender for long-term missions off world.

This article traces parallels between James Cook’s 1768 Endeavour voyage to measure the transit of Venus and current initiatives searching for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). While separated by vast time and space, both are united in their appeal to celestial frontier science in the service of all humanity, and contain discrepancies between their ethical protocols and probable outcomes. Past, present, and future colonial projects are interwoven by drawing on Dipesh Chakrabarty’s “time-knot,” Star Trek’s “prime directive,” and firsthand experience in SETI’s Indigenous studies working group. This analysis cautions against the current trend toward unabated interstellar imperialism and suggests alternative approaches for engaging outer spaces and beings through celestial wayfinding.

El estudio antropológico del espacio exterior,
o por lo menos del espacio exterior visto desde la
Tierra, abre un vasto abanico de posibilidades temáticas,
epistemológicas y metodológicas. Más allá
de los objetivos de la investigación –los imaginarios
mexicanos del futuro, las relaciones geopolíticas en
las cuales participa la industria espacial mexicana,
los estudios de ciencia y tecnología y las relaciones
entre arte y tecnología– este proyecto también
proporciona un espacio para reflexionar sobre el
ejercicio de la antropología en la actualidad.

Because permanent space settlement will be multigenerational it will have to be viable on ecological timescales so far unfamiliar to those planning space exploration. Long-term viability will require evolutionary and adaptive planning. Adaptations in the natural world provide many lessons for such planning, but implementing these lessons will require a new, evolutionary paradigm for envisioning and carrying out Earth-independent space settlement. I describe some of these adaptive lessons and propose some cognitive shifts required to implement them in a genuinely evolutionary approach to human space settlement.

“Oh great a female Doctor Who. What next? Female real doctors? Female pilots? Female scientists? Female sisters and mothers? Female WOMEN?!”

Where male-dominated science and science fiction venerates an ability to imbue inanimate materials with animacy, it further implicates reanimation as a highly gendered political act, one which uses, to borrow from linguistic theorist Mel Y. Chen, “animacy hierarchies to manipulate, affirm, and shift the ontologies that matter the world.” In the present chapter, I examine key science fiction films to build upon to theorize the Western masculine persona as additionally empowered through its endowing with the ability to reanimate, or imbue with life force that which is understood as without life, or inanimate.

What shifts might emerge in theorizations of and debates over " the human " —as a historically specific entity or as nominating a general species difference—if Earth and its variable conditions no longer form the habitual grounds for these arguments? To answer this question, I examine two sites proposed by outer space settlement advocates: the surface of Mars, and the interior of a massive, rotating cylindrical space settlement called Island Three. I argue that these places unsettle habitual critical approaches to the human in outer space by posing radically different conditions through which to make accounts of the specific and the general, including that of humanness. Using gravity as both metaphor for significance and a physical quality and quantity that potentiates worlds and experience, I examine how a variety of problematics about humans and their histories are fixed—from Earth—in the imaginations of both settlement advocates and their critics, and explore problems for both critical theory and space settlement advocacy in thinking " the human " through nonterrestrial sites. I argue that thinking humanness from elsewhere in the cosmos offers new anthropological insights about questions of difference and relation, specificity and universality, Indigeneity and settlement, ontology and epistemology, and habits of embodiment on Earth.

The recovery sleep of a 21-year-old normal woman was assessed after she had endured 11(1/2) days of sleep restriction in a world record-setting film-viewing marathon. An exceptional sleep debt was observed as indicated by an instanteous sleep onset, a high sleep efficiency, and a total sleep duration of over 20 hours. Other striking features of this recovery sleep were very short latencies to stages 3 and 4 sleep, return of Stage 4 sleep after 14.5 h, REM and SWS sleep rebound, and a linear increase in REM sleep efficiency across 14 consecutive REM-NREM episodes. Seven of nine home dreams reported after this recording contained competition themes, but none relating to the marathon films. Comparisons of the present results with those from subjects in previous record-setting events suggest possible explanations for the extremely long recovery sleep. Results also suggest that analyses of multiple consecutive sleep cycles may provide novel ways of assessing hypotheses about regulation of the REM-NREM cycle.

Nomadic pastoralism has thrived in Asia’s rangelands for several millennia by tracking seasonal changes in forage productivity and coping with a harsh climate. This pastoralist lifestyle, however, has come under intense transformations in recent decades due to socio-political and land use changes. One example is of the high altitude trans-Himalayan rangelands of the Jammu and Kashmir State in northern India: major socio-political reorganization over the last five decades has significantly impacted the traditional pasture use pattern and resources. We outline the organizational transformations and movement patterns of the Rupshu pastoralists who inhabit the region. We demonstrate the changes in terms of intensification of pasture use across the region as well as a social reorganization due to accommodation of Tibetan refugees following the Sino-Indian war in 1961-1962. We focus in particular on the Tso Kar basin - an important socio-ecological system of livestock herding and biodiversity in the eastern Ladakh region. The post-war developmental policies of the government have contributed to these modifications in traditional pasture use and present a threat to the rangelands as well as to the local biodiversity. In the Tso Kar basin, the number of households and livestock has almost doubled while pasture area has declined by half. These changes have potentially negative consequences for the long-term resilience of nomadic pastoralism as well as for the survival of rare local wildlife. To increase the pastoralist standard of living, having fewer pastoralists may be the only solution, and alternative livelihood options may bring this about. Development programmes should concentrate on enhancing opportunities for herders so that there is a greater diversity of employment opportunities and potentially better chances for the persistence of biodiversity.

In this primer, we lay out some of the basic questions, arguments and issues that we have associated with “planetary ethnography”. This is part of a long-term exploratory task that we are undertaking within the framework of the ARIES research project on “Space technologies, resources and ‘multi-planetary’ communities: Space exploration and the imaginaries of living in a climate-changing world”.

In the wake of human space exploration, Hans Blumenberg proposed
the creation of a new field of study that would strike a balance
between “centrifugal curiosity” and “centripetal care.” He called
this field astronoetics, distinguished from astronautics as a way
of critically imagining extraterrestrial travel and other activities,
neither dismissing outer space as a destination, nor abandoning
humanity’s ethical commitments to its home planet (Harries 320).
In this paper, I propose a Mexican astronoetics: a way of recognizing
the extraterrestrial aspirations of many Mexicans, while
at the same time critically reflecting on the notions of exploration
and conquest that inform these aspirations, as well as the earthly
limits that complicate the possibility of their achievement.

Terrorism is the unlawful or threatened use of force or violence on people or property to compel or intimidate governments or societies, often to achieve political, religious, or ideological objectives. However it is difficult to define terrorism because all acts of terrorism are open to interpretation.

The paper examines the role of outer space technopolitics in post-Soviet Kazakhstan. It explores how outer space, the technological artefact of global relevance, works as a hypermodern fetish that is called upon to produce what it represents, i.e. the reality of a technologically advanced Kazakh nation. The article shows that in its project of becoming a spacefaring nation the country reiterates major incentives that have motivated nuclear and space programme development in the postcolonial context of the Global South. The paper explores how collaboration with Russia allows Kazakhstan to claim its share in the Soviet space legacy rather than to distance itself from it. It then traces the rise of a new internationalism in the Kazakhstani space programme outside the post-Soviet context. The paper contributes to the debate on postcolonial techonopolitics and shows how outer space has been used to enhance the conventional domain of postcolonial national ideologies – nativism and tradition – with technology and science. Finally, the paper depicts how the growing resistance to the space programme among Kazakh civil society groups reveals a close association of the environmental agenda with an “eco-nationalism” permeated by a profoundly anti-imperial and, ultimately, anti-authoritarian political discourse.

Like other forms of debris in terrestrial and marine environments, space debris prompts questions about how we can live with the material remains of technological endeavors past and yet to come. Although techno-societies fundamentally rely on space infrastructures, they so far have failed to address the infrastructural challenge of debris. Only very recently has the awareness of space debris as a severe risk to both space and Earth infrastructures increased within the space community. One reason for this is the renewed momentum of interplanetary space exploration, including the colonization of the Moon and Mars, which is part of transhumanist and commercially driven dreams of the so-called New Space age. Understanding space infrastructures as inherently linked to earthly infrastructure, we attend to the ways in which space debris, a once accepted by-product of scientific-technological progress, economic interests, and geopolitics,

Since its launch in 2006, New Horizons’ journey through the solar system has been filled with historical firsts. After zooming past the outer planets in record time, this NASA space probe successfully captured the first ever up-close images of Pluto and its moons in 2015. Now, after a short slumber in the distant Kuiper Belt region of the solar system, it is back online, preparing to make history once more. In January 2019, New Horizons will fly by what a recent press release has called the “most primitive world ever observed by spacecraft” (Wall 2018). Originally called 2014 MU69, this Kuiper Belt object was the subject of a recent re-naming competition. The name settled on: Ultima Thule, (meaning, “beyond Thule”), a term used in medieval literature to refer to “the extreme limit of travel and discovery”1 and places “beyond the known world” (Wall 2018). The name was praised by New Horizons’ primary investigator, Alan Stern, who found its symbolism apposite beyond its spatial connotations. Not only would reaching this new world be an “ultimate” achievement for NASA’s space exploration program, Stern claimed; MU69 would also serve as “humanity’s next Ultima Thule” (Wall 2018).

Stern’s comparison of New Horizons’ space exploration to the opening of new spatial and conceptual frontiers for humanity writ large is what anthropologist Valerie Olson would describe as a kind of “systems work” (6), and is the main subject of her new monograph, Into the Extreme. Olson defines systems work as a set of processes and techniques that “conceptually and physically formalize social, material, and spatial connections and separations, often in terms of a system–environment relationship” (6). Taking on systems as an ethnographic object rather than [End Page 1417] as an analytical tool, Olson seeks to understand how systems interlink disparate things into integrated wholes, and to what sociopolitical ends. The crux of this book lies in Olson’s argument that systems are “relational technologies” (5); in the most basic sense, its five themed chapters can be seen as ethnographic manifestations of this claim across multiple scales, sites, and objects of analysis. Moving across a wide range of speculative scientific projects, from haptic spacesuits to underwater human habitats, Olson puts forth NASA spaceflight programs as central loci of systems thinking and practice, that is, systems work, in the US from the postwar era to the present. In doing so, she reveals the integral contributions of outer space systems work to contemporary American technoscientific visions and aspirations for the future, shaped out of deep-seated settler colonial ideologies but irreducible to them. Into the Extreme investigates the unfolding of a pervasive contemporary relational imagination, an imagination which the discipline of anthropology has routinely embraced. As such, anthropologists of all stripes will want to pay attention to this book.

Dans les sous-sols de l’Institut de biophysique de Krasnoiarsk se trouvent les installations de Bios-3, une structure en acier construite au debut des annees 1970, aujourd’hui a l’arret. Bios-3 participait d’une serie d’experiences menees dans l’ombre du programme spatial sovietique qui, depuis les annees 1960 jusqu’a la fin des annees 1980, testait la viabilite de systemes de support de vie dits « bioregeneratifs » pour le vol habite. Ces derniers ajoutent aux composantes physico-chimiques abiotiques des systemes de support de vie, les produits de l’activite d’autres etres vivants – plantes et micro-algues. Si les sejours d’experimentateurs humains a l’interieur de Bios-3 ont ete relativement courts (d’une duree de quelques mois), ils nous invitent a un exercice a la fois descriptif et speculatif. A partir de l’exemple de ces interieurs hermetiques, et des voix recueillies autour des experiences qui s’y sont deroulees, cet article propose une reflexion sur le deploiement de la vie au sein de ces exo-mondes prothetiques que constituent ces habitats spatiaux, processus auquel nous pouvons donner le nom d’existence capsulaire.

A number of points are brought up below for pondering and possible discussion. We should not regard our physics as the one and only reality. What is described below may seem like science fiction, but should not be brushed off as inconsequential.

In the wake of human space exploration, Hans Blumenberg proposed the creation of a new field of study that would strike a balance between “centrifugal curiosity” and “centripetal care.” He called this field astronoetics, distinguished from astronautics as a way of critically imagining extraterrestrial travel and other activities, neither dismissing outer space as a destination, nor abandoning humanity’s ethical commitments to its home planet (Harries 320). In this paper, I propose a Mexican astronoetics: a way of recognizing the extraterrestrial aspirations of many Mexicans, while at the same time critically reflecting on the notions of exploration and conquest that inform these aspirations, as well as the earthly limits that complicate the possibility of their achievement. Before I look at the interand transnational relationships required to participate in outer space activities, I find it useful to think through some spatio-political concepts that are being debated in the era of t...

En este ensayo, presento una serie de reflexiones sobre los imaginarios mexicanos del espacio exterior en la actualidad, partiendo específicamente de la noción del espacio como lienzo para la proyección visual de la esperanza en un futuro de desarrollo y bienestar, y el posicionamiento de México en el escenario tecnológico planetario. Inicio con unas ideas de orden conceptual en relación con el imaginario sociotécnico y sus vínculos con el campo visual. Luego, describo como algunas prácticas de divulgación científica de la Agencia Espacial Mexicana –particularmente el patrocinio de un concurso de “arte espacial”– dan cuenta de un conjunto de imaginarios visuales mexicanos con respecto al espacio exterior y el papel de México en su futura exploración y explotación. Concluyo con una llamada a la creación y visibilización de imaginarios alternativos que permitirían visualizar futuros distintos de una manera crítica y propositiva.

Link to a 26-minute documentary film entitled The War of the Princes of Rain ("La guerra de los príncipes de la lluvia", in Spanish) researched, directed and co-produced by Bernardo Pérez-Soler:

https://vimeo.com/119632830
(Please request password by writing an e-mail to bperezsoler@gmail.com)

The old Macehual Maya experts in the art of recalling events long gone-by from the state of Quintana Roo, Mexico, still evoke vividly and in great detail the final stages of the so-called “Caste War” of Yucatan, even though they did not witness them or ever read anything about them—actually, they never learned how to read.

The vividness of this evocation has to do with the fact that the remembrance of the Caste War is thoroughly intertwined with both Maya religion and agriculture, and, more generally, with how the people who still speak the Yucatec Maya language spend their everyday lives.

This film is about the old stories on the war three of these men recount, and about the main activities those who share (or, in one case, oppose) their beliefs engage in.

Albeit in its present form it is a fully completed short-film, I have recorded enough material to enlarge it into a feature-length film. I, however, did not get enough funding to edit and post-produce such longer version.

Like other forms of debris in terrestrial and marine environments, space debris prompts questions about how we can live with the material remains of technological endeavors past and yet to come. Although techno-societies fundamentally rely on space infrastructures, they so far have failed to address the infrastructural challenge of debris. Only very recently has the awareness of space debris as a severe risk to both space and Earth infrastructures increased within the space community. One reason for this is the renewed momentum of interplanetary space exploration, including the colonization of the Moon and Mars, which is part of transhumanist and commercially driven dreams of the so-called New Space age. Understanding space infrastructures as inherently linked to earthly infrastructure, we attend to the ways in which space debris, a once accepted by-product of scientific-technological progress, economic interests, and geopolitics, increasingly becomes a matter of concern. Drawing on...

Abstract A renewed public and state interest in space exploration in recent years, coupled with technological advancements in rocket science and architectural systems, has made design and engineering initiatives for Martian living tangible and urgent. This article traces the practice of utopian architectural design of a home on Mars. This home has been described by its architects as a ‘place for people’ and for ‘all of humanity.’ Off-Earth habitats have traditionally been designed with emphasis on the functionality of surviving extreme environments. New designs for Mars aim to make human-centric homes in which people can be comfortable. However, when confronted with the known realities of the Martian landscape, such designs reconfigure the place and form of the human. The Martian landscape requires that a home shelters the human body from hostile elements through totalising closed loop architectural systems. In such extreme architecture, the human form is configured as a calculable body, and becomes ‘erased.’ This article ethnographically traces how the human is imagined in such design practice and asks what happens to the idea of the human through informed design thinking as architects meet space scientists. It traces how utopic motivations to build a space ‘for all humanity’ are challenged through the material and practical reality of making design choices and exclusions. The ethnography follows the figure of the human as it is imagined as an emergent Martian lifeform which confronts the problems of the different gravity, light, radiation, and terrain that a life on mars would entail. Considering how the concept of ‘living’ might be possible in a future Martian habitat involves the practice of imagining radically alternative forms of life. By tracing how these are imagined, contested, and considered this article asks how practices of conceptualising radical alterity relate to understanding oneself as connected to the enduring idea of being human.

Past patterns of exploration, colonization and exploitation on Earth continue to provide the predominant paradigms that guide many space programs. Any project of crewed space exploration, especially of the magnitude envisioned by the 100-Year Starship Study, must guard against the hubris that may emerge among planners, crew, and others associated with the project, including industries and bureaucracies that will emerge from the effort. Maintaining a non-exploitative approach may be difficult in consideration of the century of preparatory research and development and the likely mulitgenerational nature of the voyage itself.  Starting now with mission dreamers and planners, the purpose of the voyage must be cast as one of respectful learning and humble discovery, not of conquest (either actual or metaphorical) or other inappropriate models, including military. At a minimum, the Study must actively build non-violence into the voyaging culture it is beginning to create today. References to exploitive colonization, conquest, destiny and other terms from especially American frontier mythology, while tempting in their propagandizing power, should be avoided as they limit creative thinking about alternative possible futures.  Future voyagers must strive to adapt to new environments wherever possible and be assimilated by new worlds both biologically and behaviorally rather than to rely on attempts to recreate the Earth they have left.  Adaptation should be strongly considered over terraforming.  This paper provides an overview of previous work linking the language of colonization to space programs and challenges the extension of the myth of the American frontier to the Starship Study.  It argues that such metaphors would be counter-productive
at best and have the potential to doom long-term success and survival by planting seeds of social decay and self-destruction. Cautions and recommendations are suggested.

Have you finished your PhD but not found academic employment? Are you in a fixed‐term academic post, or moving between those sorts of jobs? Do you intend to pursue a career in academia, despite your better judgement and the weary look of experienced academics? If so, this guide might be for you...