Description

Building on five years of Outer Space sessions at the AAG, this panel convenes current critical engagements with the (extra-)terrestrial, its material impacts on Earth and its human and non-human inhabitants. We situate this session within two of the thematic emphases of AAG 2021: Geographies of Access: Inclusion and Pathways and the Processes of Ethnonationalism and Exclusion around the World, in order to shed light on the manners in which outer space, space-based technologies, and terrestrial environments are entangled with more familiar domains of critical geographical inquiry. Previous sessions have explored the geographies of non-Earth spaces, the critical geopolitics of outer space, human rights issues, non-Earth spaces and public engagement, democratization and (de)politicization of non-Earth places and related technologies. The 2021 panels explore the terrestrial locations of Outer Space work. While Outer Space can be understood as “out there” much of work that generates space-related knowledge and politics takes places in terrestrial environments, “down here.” From launch sites to telescopes, to offices and remote working practices, to colonial uses of indigenous lands, to analogue Outer Space environments, there is often a focus on researchers and professionals involved in Outer Space work within exclusive sites. In this session, we draw attention to those displaced, impacted by, excluded from, or allowed conditional access to the terrestrial environments and artifacts (objects, waste, data) of Outer Space.