Exploring the extra-planetary : social studies of outer space

Within the past decade, national and commercial activity in and connected to outer space has accelerated at an astounding rate. As anthropology and related social sciences keep pace with these developments, scholars have trained their critical faculties to understand how societies have related to space in the past and the present and how we may approach space in the future. In the autumn of 2021, the members of the project Anthropological Research into the Imaginaries and Exploration of Space (ARIES) developed and taught a class covering this latest turn toward space at Jagiellonian University. Using their experience running this course as a launchpad, this article surveys the current state of space anthropology, highlighting four major themes: science and technology, terrestrial inequalities, environmental justice and alternative relations to the cosmos. It concludes with reflections on the utility and ethics of extraplanetary social scientific research.