Exploring Ethnography of Outer Space

Auteur

Jenia Gorbanenko is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at University College London specialising in the anthropology of religion in outer space.

Dr. David (Jeeva) Jeevendrampillai is a Lecturer at The University of Manchester. He researches planetary belonging and community building in outer space.

Adryon Kozel is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at University College London. They research how space enthusiasts construct potential futures in space, and narratives of what it means for humans to go to space.

All Editors are members of the ERC Advanced Grant ETHNO-ISS, an anthropological study of the International Space Station based at University College London.

Texte du rabat

This book explores new methods and perspectives in the anthropology of outer space. For the past ten years, scholarship of outer space has grown significantly in the social sciences. Now, an international community of anthropologists is starting to produce significant contributions to this work.

Contenu

1. Introduction, 2. Transcendence, bodies, and estranged labour in outer space: The astronaut's contribution to a general theory of hierarchy, 3. Anthropologists in outer space: Science fiction, infrastructure, comparison, 4. Imaginaries of Outer Space from Africa. Astronomy Infrastructure in South Africa and Madagascar, 5. Museums, Meteorites, and Portals: tracing the imperial logics of trans-planetary resource extractivism, 6. Of Stars and Wheat: Making Sense of the Cosmos in a Regional Museum of Cosmonautics, 7. From Mexico to the Moon: (Outer)Spatializing Ethnography, 8. Are we still anthropologists if we go to space using only our imaginations?, 9. Terraforming a field site: Reflections on crafting knowledge on Mars, 10. Composing the cosmos: Tuning into multiplicities with Thai Buddhist concepts, 11. Divining South Korea's Space Age through Korean Shamanism and Astrology (Myngni), 12. Space intentionally left blank, 13. Methodological Sensibilities in Outer Spaces, 14. a response