[STS-Africa] Fwd: Call for Papers, 4s/EASST: Re-scaling Outer Space(s)

[Gianluca Miscione]

Happy to share this original call.
Best,
Gianluca

Gianluca Miscione
University College Dublin
http://www.ucd.ie/cito/members/gianlucamiscione

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: James Lawrence Merron <james.merron at unibas.ch>
Date: Thu, 2 Jan 2020 18:32:54 +0000
Subject: Call for Papers, 4s/EASST: Re-scaling Outer Space(s)
To: Gianluca Miscione <gianluca.miscione at ucd.ie>

Dear Gianluca Miscione,

Would you kindly post this call for paper via STS-Africa? (below is the
panel description).

In short, our panel is on (outer)space science and technology from the
margins. The organisers - Siri Lamoureaux, Davide Chinigò and I - draw from
work in South Africa, Ghana and (potentially) Sudan. We invite contributors
from these or any other countries/regions.

The conference takes place in Prague from 18-21 August 2020 and is jointly
organised by the Society for the Social Study of Science (4s) and the
European Association for the Social Study of Science (EASST). Here is a
link to the website and call for papers:
https://www.easst4s2020prague.org/call-for-papers-and-panels/

Our panel (Number 148) is titled “Re-scaling outer-space(s)”, and falls
within the program’s category “Postcolonial/Decolonial STS”:
https://www.easst4s2020prague.org/accepted-open-panels-postcolonial-decolonial-sts/

Submissions close on 29 February 2020.

Kind regards,
James Merron
Postdoc, Center for African Studies Basel

***

Re-scaling outer-space(s)

Davide Chinigò, Stellenbosch University, davide.chinigo at gmail.com<mailto:
davide.chinigo at gmail.com>
Siri Lamoureaux, Max Plank Institute, lamoureaux at lost-research-group.org
<mailto:lamoureaux at lost-research-group.org>
James Merron, Basel University, james.merron at unibas.ch<mailto:
james.merron at unibas.ch>

The gaze into outer-space is mediated from a position on (or near) earth,
one that is emplaced within specific social, technological, economic and
historical conditions (Seth 2009). Locations near observatories and
satellite launch sites are often represented as ‘empty spaces’ (Walker &
Chinigò 2018) with no history and no people, but full of promises for
future developments – a normative frame about the role of scientific
progress to shape the future of humanity that recalls an earlier colonial
imagination. Space science infrastructures are thus intentionally isolated
from the ambient noise of modern life (Agar 1994) and potentially explosive
events (Redfield 2002). When people from the outside do come close, they
are constructed by management as interference, collateral danger, or
recipients of development.

Enmeshed within Euro-American imaginations of space and place (Messeri
2016), we juxtapose cosmic imaginaries of outer-space with outer-spaces. By
‘rescaling’ these imaginations we open up a discussion about the histories
and lives of people who occupy places on the periphery of ground-based
space science infrastructures. This panel therefore reassesses cosmic
imaginations from the perspective of the margins, intended in geo-political
terms, bringing into sharp focus the role of localities in non-western
contexts that re-calibrate the scale of outer-space and the possibilities
of becoming in ‘outer-spaces’. We invite papers that integrate a social
science approach to outer-space within the growing discussions inspired by
postcolonial STS (Harding 2011) that must address the problem of universal
models and regional realities, but do so without resorting to explanations
of “local culture”.



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