Societies have always been formed in a relationship with the rest of the universe. With rapid developments in satellite communications and imaging, space exploration and tourism, military space technology, and cosmology itself, relationships with outer space are changing. These changes have inspired a wave of critical academic work in recent years, re-examining the history, present and future of outer space and the place of humans within it. This handbook provides an in-depth exploration of major themes relating to society, culture and the universe and will inspire and cultivate debate in this exciting and burgeoning area of study for future researchers and theorists. Bringing together scholarship from a range of disciplines including geography, economics, history, political science, sociology, philosophy, science and technology studies, law, cultural astronomy, anthropology, media studies, literature, psychosocial studies and art, it closely examines how outer space is socially produced, experienced, perceived and imagined, and the significance of this for terrestrial social life.

The Routledge Handbook of Social Studies of Outer Space offers state-of-the-art overview of contemporary social and cultural research on outer space. International in scope, the thirty-eight contributions by over fifty leading researchers and artists across a variety of disciplines and fields of knowledge, present a range of debates and pose key questions about the crafting of futures in relation to outer space. The Handbook is a call to attend more carefully to engagements with outer space, empirically, affectively, and theoretically, while characterizing current research practices and outlining future research agendas. This recalibration opens profound questions of intersectional politics, race, equity, and environmental justice around the contested topics of space exploration and life off-Earth. Among the many themes included in the volume are the various infrastructures, networks and systems that enable and sustain space exploration; space heritage; the ethics of outer space; social and environmental justice; fundamental debates about life in outer space as it pertains to both astrobiology and SETI; the study of scientific communities; the human body and consciousness; Indigenous astronomical systems of Knowledge; contemporary space art; and ongoing critical interventions to overcome the legacies of colonialism and dismantle hegemonic narratives of outer space.

In this book, a celebration of the work of the sociologist Peter Dickens serves as the catalyst for exploring the relationship between human ‘internal nature’ (our health and psychological well-being) and ‘external nature’ (the environment on which we depend and which we collectively transform). Across contributions from Ted Benton, James Ormrod, Kate Soper, John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark, Graham Sharp, James Addicott, Kathryn Dean and Peter Dickens himself, the book draws attention to alienation associated with the promotion of different knowledges in late capitalist production. But it also highlights the possibilities for generating less alienated relations with our environment in the future. As well as discussing the philosophical and theoretical issues involved, the book contains contemporary case studies of ultra-processed food, satellite farming, computerised thinking and dark tourism.

This book provides detailed insights into how space and popular culture intersect across a broad spectrum of examples, including cinema, music, art, arcade games, cartoons, comics, and advertisements. This is a pertinent topic since the use of space themes differs in different cultural contexts, and these themes can be used to explore various aspects of the human condition and provide a context for social commentary on politically sensitive issues. With the use of space imagery evolving over the past sixty years of the space age, this is a topic ripe for in-depth exploration. The book also discusses the contrasting visions of space from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the reality of today and analyzes space vehicles and habitats in popular depictions of space from an engineering perspective, exploring how many of those ideas have actually been implemented in practice and why or why not (a case of life imitating art and vice versa). As such, it covers a wide array of relevant and timely topics examining intersections between space and popular culture and offering accounts of space and its effect on culture, language, and storytelling from the southern regions of the world.

This is the first comprehensive, multi-disciplinary work on the emergent phenomenon of space tourism. It is written by leading specialists and covers a wide spectrum of topics including space history and technology, the environmental, social, and legal aspects of the development of a future space tourism industry, and space tourism marketing.

Limiting Outer Space propels the historicization of outer space by focusing on the Post-Apollo period. After the moon landings, disillusionment set in. Outer space, no longer considered the inevitable destination of human expansion, lost much of its popular appeal, cultural significance and political urgency. With the rapid waning of the worldwide Apollo frenzy, the optimism of the Space Age gave way to an era of space fatigue and planetized limits. Bringing together the history of European astroculture and American-Soviet spaceflight with scholarship on the 1970s, this cutting-edge volume examines the reconfiguration of space imaginaries from a multiplicity of disciplinary perspectives. Rather than invoking oft-repeated narratives of Cold War rivalry and an escalating Space Race, Limiting Outer Space breaks new ground by exploring a hitherto underrated and understudied decade, the Post-Apollo period.

This book provides a unique analysis of the complex relationship between governance and the global commons. It has a specific reference to the dynamic and growing outer space economy and society, and how experience in the maritime sector (which exhibits many of the same issues and challenges as outer space) can be useful in suggesting moves forward in policy-making and design. This book fills a large gap in the literature of both governance and the development of outer space. Whilst the maritime sector has a long history of debate, albeit little in terms of governance and policy-making, outer space has much less and what there has been, commonly focused upon technical considerations. The importance of this book is that the failures of maritime governance need to be avoided in the outer space sector which exhibits many of the same issues particularly those related to the global commons. Innovative and exciting, this book will be of interest to academics studying corporate governance, business management, and space capitalism.

This collection reads the science fiction genre and television medium as examples of heterotopia (and television as science fiction technology), in which forms, processes, and productions of space and time collide – a multiplicity of spaces produced and (re)configured. The book looks to be a heterotopic production, with different chapters and “spaces” (of genre, production, mediums, technologies, homes, bodies, etc), reflecting, refracting, and colliding to offer insight into spatial relationships and the implications of these spaces for a society that increasingly inhabits the world through the space of the screen. A focus on American science fiction offers further spatial focus for this study – a question of geographical and cultural borders and influence not only in terms of American science fiction but American television and streaming services. The (contested) hegemonic nature of American science fiction television will be discussed alongside a nation that has significantly been understood, even produced, through the television screen. Essays will examine the various (re)configurations, or productions, of space as they collapse into the science fiction heterotopia of television since 1987, the year Star Trek: Next Generation began airing.

The SAGE Handbook of Historical Geography provides an international and in-depth overview of the field with chapters that examine the history, present condition and future significance of historical geography in relation to recent developments and current research.

This book traces the development of diverse British cultures of outer space, utilizing key geographical concepts such as landscape, place, and national identity. It examines the early visionary ideas of writers H. G. Wells and Olaf Stapledon, the ambitious British space programme of the 1960s, and narrations of British cultural identity that accompanied the space missions of Helen Sharman, Beagle 2 and Tim Peake. The exploration of British cultures of outer space throughout the book helps understand the emergence of the British Interplanetary Society. It also explains its significance in pre-war and post-war periods through an analysis of the roles of influential figures such as Arthur C. Clarke and Patrick Moore. The chapters explore utopian and dystopian representations of space exploration, examine the mysterious phenomenon of UFO culture, and consider plans for humanity’s imagined future across interstellar space. Throughout the book geography is advocated as a home for critical studies of outer space, illuminating its significance in terms of the reciprocal relationships between exploration and the sublime, science and the imagination, Earth and cosmos. As an emergent field of research in the social sciences, this book makes an excellent contribution to the study of the outer space in Britain and abroad developing a distinctive kind of outer spatial geography with major implications for future teaching and research.