For five years James Ormrod (Lecturer in Sociology in SASS) and Peter Dickens (Lecturer in Sociology and Visiting Professor in SASS) have been urging sociologists to look upwards towards the cosmos.
Societies have always been 'cosmic'. For thousands of years people have made assumptions about the cosmos; what it consists of and how it influences our daily life on Earth. For many, the cosmos contains gods or a God deeply influencing human affairs. The cosmos may even contain a heaven to which we can aspire. In our more secular society, the cosmos is arguably losing some of its mystery. It is made of materials we can use. It might even be settled by human society, perhaps as a means of escaping earthly crises.
A 'cosmic sociology' explores how the universe is imagined. At the same time it examines how imagined universes influence our society back on earth. A cosmic sociology is also critical. It examines, for example, how social elites (such as astrologers, religious authorities and cosmologists) influence lay people's understandings of the cosmos.
A critical cosmic sociology also questions contemporary assumptions about our relationship with the universe. Outer space technology is now often used to promote the powerful, these including military authorities and the major media companies. But, given the many problems and inequalities now facing earthly society we should surely be examining how access to outer space can help us start emancipating the socially-dispossessed. The technology allowing access to outer space can be used, for example, to bring better telecommunications to marginalised people. Similarly, satellites can be used to monitor environmental change, track the movements of needy refugees or coordinate responses to disaster. Scientific understandings of the universe can be developed using relatively cheap robots rather than risky and highly-expensive manned missions.
These and many other issues are raised in James' and Peter's recent book; Cosmic Society. Towards a Sociology of the Universe.
A new website, sociologyoftheuniverse.net, encourages visitors to make their own contribution to debates over how the cosmos should be understood and used. The site encourages our students and the general public at large to start ‘looking upwards’.
