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- Convenors:
-
Sandra Fernandez
Alexandru Balasescu (Royal Roads University, Victoria, Canada)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Thursday 9 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Space travel is back on the agenda, spearheaded by Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, and influencing how and which bodies leave the Earth. We invite anthropologists to explore intersectionality and labour embedded in technology, while pondering the methods of our discipline as it migrates into space.
Long Abstract:
Private space-tourism is 'in'. Blending the colonial West with Star Trek, we see a space-suited Jeff Bezos donning a cowboy hat, hosting William Shatner, once Captain Kirk, for his first real space travel. However, journalists question the first Chinese woman astronaut on parenting, while Mission: AstroAccess researchers design inclusive space infrastructures.
Space is reaffirmed as a place of negotiation between public and private, between the bodies that populate it, their representation, and their interaction with technology as the medium of space colonisation. This panel invites debate around the possibility of space ethnography, and the embodiment of human assumptions within space design and interactions, from technology to labour.
How does the development of space technologies account for how different bodies occupy space?
Interstellar Reproduction: With space travel requiring extreme practicality embedded in plans and design, how will the management of bodily excretions, particularly those linked to the politically charged field of reproduction, develop?
Space Ethnography: What does it mean to be a space anthropologist? What type of limitations may appear? How does fieldwork change?
Intersectionality, Labour, Technology: How will our biases travel into space using software and infrastructure design? What are the current efforts to imagine space other than populated by 'neutral', and yet masculine, androids?
Any form of submissions are welcome, from ethnographies of space design sites, to fictional ethnographies, speculative reflections, or science fiction stories. We intend to create a special issue in the Journal of Future Robot Life, and to engage with public and private space agencies.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 9 June, 2022, -Cristina Luna (UNED)
Paper short abstract:
The upcoming human settlements outside our planet require a great deal of technological deployment and the collaboration between humans and different types of robots. In this paper I propose an understanding between the different agents and the role of anthropology in their study of space lives.
Paper long abstract:
The missions that will inaugurate a new era of human planetary exploration are planned for the first half of this decade. The first settlements will require a large deployment of robots capable of performing exploration and analysis of the environment, as well as various robot-human collaborative tasks. It is expected that there will be more robots than humans, meaning that much of the human interactions will be with robots. In this sense, where do we draw the line of what is defined as "human" and what is defined as "robot"?
This line can be studied through the relationships between agents, human and non-human, their narratives and their experiences. Thus, it is found that the boundary between the human and the machine is neither objective nor arbitrarily drawn, but is constantly redefined and reformulated, as a sign of the overlapping of human and robotic identities. In Space Anthropology the debate is of particular interest, as future ethnographies will take into account technology, online life and robotics.
This paper aims to understand the blurring of the boundaries between humans and machines and the role that anthropology will have to play in the study of future extraterrestrial populations.
Lula Wattam (Goldsmiths)
Paper short abstract:
An exploration of the emerging British Space infrastructure and its extractivist violence on both the terrestrial and extraterrestrial environments. Analysing the colonial heteronormative dynamics that are being enacted and projected onto OuterSpace, and the speculative consequences of this.
Paper long abstract:
Space is becoming increasingly full of human. Satellites and space stations, chunks of metal and exploded rockets, skin cells, and, somewhere, a perfectly preserved dead dog. We can confront the present from the interstellar sci-fi and futuristic ideologies but also anchor our analysis in the long history of exploitation that is being mapped onto our cosmic environments. Using methodologies from infrastructural anthropology I will propose engagement with the networks that enable human expansion into space. Using the ports as a way to crumble the binaries between Earth and space.
The Spaceports are being built around the peripheries of the UK, reproducing environmental imperialism on areas deemed 'empty land' yet they already contain their own ecologies. Looking at the intersection between nationalism, space, colonialism and birdlife.
With the building of a 'space-faring nation', taking 'British values' into space with 'British infrastructure' does this affect people's experience of the state and Outerspace? Does this result in interplanetary citizenship, afforded to those inside Britain, specifically around the ports?
Connecting the British strategy to the wider industry as the cosmologies of planetary escape becomes increasingly realistic. Yet what ideologies are going to transcend Earth, at the moment Libertarian, heteronormative, hypercapitalist notions championed by the "Space Cowboys". We gotta do something! Social scientists have to use their critical tools to understand the discourse and physicalities of the harmful industry and reinvigorate imaginaries using speculative decolonial and queer reflections.
Edmund Dean (QMUL)
Paper short abstract:
Prior research by the author suggests some non-binary people are highly "possibilist" regarding the present and future capabilities of intelligent robots. I seek further evidence, and test explanations, for this phenomenon. Moreover, I construct a futurism of AI informed by these perspectives.
Paper long abstract:
In a previous paper, I tested whether and how people perceive the "ensouledness" of both fictional and real-world AI using a qualitative survey. While most respondents considered very few of the real-world examples to be "ensouled", and were divided on the fictional examples, the non-binary respondents to the survey were universally positive in considering the AI to be "ensouled". I theorize, therefore, that non-binary people may be unusually disposed to a broad vision of AI, and may not be as significantly swayed by "classical anthropomorphisms" (such as sex characteristics) as others.
This paper attempts to provide more substance to this theory through interviews with non-binary people about their lived experience of, and perspectives on, AI, and the future possibilities of AI. I also seek explanations for this phenomenon in gender theory, psychology, and the science of human-computer interaction.
I also propose that non-binary perspectives offer a helpful challenge to cis-normative perspectives on the presentation of relatable AI. If we can construct anthropomorphisms which are free from the gender binary, we may open up new ideas of how AI can - or should - look and behave. A further goal is to free the idea of anthropomorphism itself from sex- and gender-normative bias. By projecting non-binary perspectives into the future, we may be able to envision the real or potential "humanity" of AI independently from cisnormative, "default male", or ableist bias.