Message posted on 27/02/2020

CfP: Responsibility and Outer Space – ASA 2020

With apologies for cross-posting

Dear colleagues,

We invite you to participate in our panel 'Responsibility and Outer
Space' at the upcoming ASA conference 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.no)

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.org/conferences/asa2020/cfp

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 [1]'. For more information about
the conference in general, please click here [2].

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; a.parkhurst@ucl.ac.uk

With very best wishes,

Alex, Jeeva, Aaron

---
Alexander Taylor
Department of Social Anthropology
University of Cambridge
M: +44 (0)7913722912

[3]

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Links:
------
[1] https://www.theasa.org/conferences/asa2020/theme
[2] https://www.theasa.org/conferences/asa2020/
[3] http://webmail-1.hermes.cam.ac.uk/./#NOP
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