Geographies of outer space: Progress and new opportunities

Abstract

Research into outer space has burgeoned in recent years, through the work of scholars in the social sciences, arts and humanities. Geographers have made a series of useful contributions to this emergent work, but scholarship remains fairly limited in comparison to other disciplinary fields. This forum explains the scholarly roots of these new geographies of outer space, considering why and how geographies of outer space could make further important contributions. The forum invites reflections from political, environmental, historical and cultural geographers to show how human geography can present future avenues to continued scholarship into outer space.

Geopolitical Imaginaries of the Space Shuttle Mission Patches

“…The Space Shuttle programme thus presents an interesting case for analysis of the shifting geopolitical imaginaries in the iconography associated with its missions. More so, this paper builds on recent calls for a further engagement with the political geographies of outer space made originally by MacDonald (2007; see also Glassner and Fahrer 2004) and subsequently expanded on (Dunnett et al 2019) Previous studies into material cultures have drawn on Billig's (1995) notion of banal nationalism in order to inform the understanding and conceptualisation of the visual cultures under study and to explain "the capacity of… images to represent nations" (Penrose 2011, 429). The reproduction of the mission patches of the Space Shuttle, I…”

“…The lack of criticality around outer space means that some of this work may seem 'late' in terms of wider shifts within critical geopolitics, but this article presents a foray into popular geopolitical representations of outer space through a visual culture, and will be useful in underpinning future work that expands on these reflections through analysis that extends, critiques and compares this emergent work. MacDonald (2007, p. 595) first most notably argued that geography was the obvious discipline "to carry a broad range of cultural, historical, political and economic inquiries into outer space; inquiries that might freely draw, inter alia, on Marxist, feminist, postcolonial, psychoanalytic and deconstructive readings of geopower", something echoed and built on latterly by Dunnett et al (2019). This paper presents tangible examples of, first, how such research can be done, but also, second, pushes forward the agenda for a critical engagement with outer space.…”

“…What is represented can come to form an important discourse in understanding what it is a nation wants to be perceived as representing and being a part of; as Brunn asserts, when "states emphasise 'the visual'…they inform and educate their own populations and those beyond about where they are, who they are, and what they are about" (2011,19). My focus here is to continue this interest in seemingly insignificant, or banal, aspects of material culture in order to continue "the obvious centrality of the visual in geopolitics" (Raento 2006, 601), but also to show empirically, following Maclaren (in Dunnett et al 2019), that the presentation of geopolitical scripting of nationalism is bound to the geographies of outer space "through the discourses and representations of the visual cultures of outer space and our interpretations of these" (Dunnett et al 2019, 333). This work is contextualised within the field of popular geopolitics, as part of the broader field of critical geopolitics (Ó Tuathail 1996;Dodds 2001;Müller and Reuber 2008;Sharp 2014).…”

“…Outer space has long been considered a site of political contestation and geopolitical posturing, particularly within the wider conflict of the Cold War (Sempa 2002;Chari 2010), and the perceived risk and fear of domination by either the USA or USSR (Launius 2006). MacDonald (2007) and others (Dunnett et al 2019;Ormrod 2016, 2007) have established that outer space should continue to be a site of analysis to consider terrestrial issues. This paper focusses on the Space Shuttle programme as, first, it presents a unique example, unlike the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programmes, that spans different geopolitical times, both during and after the Cold War, and, second, there has been less focus on it within academic writing in the social sciences despite its recurrent use in wider popular cultures of film and television.…”

Imperialism, Technology and Tropicality in Arthur C. Clarke’s Geopolitics of Outer Space

“…Emerging research on the geographies of outer space, informed by cross-disciplinary work, has emphasised the significance of place, culture and politics alongside technical knowledge in the formulation of outer space discourse, interpreting diverse source materials including satellite imagery, science fiction novels and policy documents (MacDonald 2007, Dunnett et al 2017, Klinger and Bednar 2019. At the same time, research in critical geopolitics has offered a variety of accounts on the ways in which science has affected geopolitical outlooks in the twentieth century, for example, as a mask for Cold War antagonism, as a means of extending regimes of territoriality, or through a thwarted desire for transcendence from politics entirely (Krige 2006, Dodds 2010, MacDonald 2015.…”