An Ethnography of an Extra-terrestrial Society: the International Space Station

The ISS as a Site of Social Inquiry

The International Space Station (ISS) is arguably the oldest sustained human environment beyond Earth and offers a rare opportunity to study social life in microgravity. ETHNO-ISS investigates the ISS ethnographically, examining how its modular form and everyday practices emerge through the collaboration of the United States, Russia, Europe, and Japan. By treating the station as both a scientific platform and a lived world, the project seeks to understand how different cultural and institutional traditions shape its construction, operation, and meaning.

Microgravity and Material-Social Transformation

At the centre of this research is the question of how microgravity alters material culture and sociality. Social science theories have largely been developed under the assumptions of Earth’s gravity; the ISS disrupts this foundation. ETHNO-ISS therefore explores how bodies, objects, and architectural spaces behave when freed from terrestrial constraints, and how astronauts and ground-based specialists adapt to this altered condition. Through this approach, the project reconsiders familiar concepts such as embodiment, habitability, and the organisation of everyday life.

Worlding and Multi-Sited Ethnography

The project’s conceptual focus extends to ideas of transcendence, territoriality, and worlding, examining how the ISS generates its own forms of spatial, political, and symbolic order. These questions are pursued through a multi-sited methodology that views the station and its mission control centres as a single, interconnected assemblage. In doing so, ETHNO-ISS develops an anthropological framework capable of addressing human existence in environments no longer bound by Earth.

Image & patch credit: Design by GHL. Animation by Image and Process

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 833135).