Dear colleagues,
We invite you to participate in our panel ‘Responsibility and Outer Space’ at the upcoming ASAconference in St Andrews, Scotland, from 24-27 August 2020.
Deadline for submission: 23:59 GMT on 15 March 2020
Conveners:
Alexander Taylor, University of Cambridge (aret2@cam.ac.uk)
David Jeevendrampillai, NTNU (david.jeevendrampillai@ntnu.
Aaron Parkhurst, UCL (a.parkhurst@ucl.ac.uk)
Panel Description (short):
This panel invites papers that explore the theme of responsibility in relation to outer space. How can anthropologists engage with emerging contestations and forms of social relations, risk, futures, ethics and responsibly in current socio-political configurations of outer space?
Panel Description:
Amidst accelerating concerns about the future of life on Earth, outer space has come to offer powerful images and imaginaries of escape from an imperilled planet. Technology entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have described Mars colonisation as a ‘back-up’ plan to insure Earth and increase the chances of the survival of the human race. They have placed responsibility for the future of humanity firmly in the hands of the techno-scientific mega-organisations of billionaires and big government. Outer space is also a source of emerging threat for which government bodies or corporations can enact, seize, assign or secure responsibility. Rogue asteroids, space debris, military weaponisation and other space threats call forth different practices and modalities of responsibility.This panel invites papers that explore the theme of responsibility in relation to outer space. It asks as to emergent reconfigurations of social relations, risk, ethics and responsibly in current formulations of outer space. How is responsibility for the future being shaped and what social relations are being established, maintained or broken down in discourses and practices of space settlement or security? In what ways are theses futures structured within particular political and economic frameworks? How might off-world thinking deflect responsibility from pressing Earthly problems? What forms of inclusion and exclusion do outer space narratives of responsibility entail? This panel will use grounded ethnographic case studies to consider more-than-planetary questions. In doing so it will ask how anthropologists can engage with emerging contestations and configurations of responsibility at such scales?
Paper proposals must be submitted via the online portal (scroll down to the ‘Rules’ section and you will see a green ‘propose your paper’ button):https://www.theasa.
Proposals must consist of:
- A paper title
- The name/s and email address/es of the author and co-authors
- A short abstract of fewer than 300 characters
- A long abstract of fewer than 250 words
On submission of the proposal, the proposing author (but not the co-authors) will receive an automated email confirming receipt. Co-authors cannot be added/removed nor can papers be withdrawn by the proposers themselves – for that, please email asa2020@st-andrews.ac.uk.
The theme of ASA2020 is ‘Responsibility’. For more information about the conference in general, please click here.
Inquiries are most welcome. Please CC all three convenors into any email correspondence so that we can get back to you as swiftly as possible:
aret2@cam.ac.uk; david.jeevendrampillai@ntnu.no
With very best wishes,
Alex, Jeeva, Aaron