As an anthropologist, Victor Buchli has one foot in the Neolithic past and another in the space-faring future. A professor of material culture at University College London, his research has taken him from excavations of the New Stone Age site at Çatalhöyük, Turkey to studies of the modern suburbs of London to examinations of life on — and in service to — the International Space Station.
It is in that later role, as principal investigator for a European Research Council-funded research project on the “Ethnography of an Extraterrestrial Society,” that he visits the Social Science Bites podcast. He details for interviewer David Edmonds some of the things his team has learned from studying the teams — both in space but more so those on Earth — supporting the International Space Station.
Buchli describes, for example, the “overview effect.” The occurs when which people seeing the Earth without the dotted lines and map coordinates that usually color their perceptions. “When you look down,” he explains, “you don’t see borders, you just see the earth in its totality, in a sense that produces a new kind of universalism.”
He also reviews his own work on material culture, specifically examining how microgravity affects the creation of things. “It is the case within the social sciences, and particularly within anthropology, that gravity is just assumed. And so here we have an environment where suddenly this one single factor that controls absolutely everything that we do as humans on Earth is basically factored out. So how does that change our understanding of these human activities, these sorts of human institutions?”
Buchli has written extensively on material culture, serving as managing editor of the Journal of Material Culture, founding and managing editor of Home Cultures, and editor of 2002’s The Material Culture Reader and the five-volume Material Culture: Critical Concepts in the Social Sciences. Other books he’s written include 1995’s Interpreting Archaeology, 1999’s An Archaeology of Socialism, and 2001’s Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past.
To download an MP3 of this podcast, right-click this link and save. The transcript of the conversation appears below.
David Edmonds: Victor Buchli is an anthropologist at University College London. He’s been leading a five-year European Research Council project on an unusual topic. Victor Buckley, welcome to Social Science Bites.
Victor Buchli: Thank you for having me.
David Edmonds: You’re an anthropologist, and the caricature of an anthropologist is that they go to the other side of the world to observe some alien culture. You’ve taken that to an extreme. You’ve gone into space, as it were. Tell me what your project is.
Victor Buchli: Well, basically, this has been a five-year ethnography about life on the ISS, particularly in relation to the communities on Earth and on the ISS that relate to one another. And it’s been focusing on this relationship between Earth and low Earth orbit, where the ISS is located, to try to understand essentially how, essentially human habitations begin to sort of expand from its terrestrial point of origin into low earth orbit. Essentially, we as humans have been inhabiting low Earth orbit right now for the past 25 years continuously.
David Edmonds: So the ISS is the International Space Station. But it’s not the only space station up there at the moment.
Victor Buchli: That is correct. There is the Chinese station, the Tiangong station, which has been up there for a little while right now, maybe two or three years.
David Edmonds: And how many people have actually been on the space station?
Victor Buchli: As of this date, hard to say exactly. But I would say, you know, probably close to 300.
David Edmonds: And they spend several months there before they come back to Earth?
Victor Buchli: Yes. I mean, usually missions there last from, you know, about six months or so, or could be longer. It’s essentially the oldest continuously occupied habitat in space to date.
David Edmonds: What’s your data? How are you collecting your information?
Victor Buchli: Well, the data is quite varied, because essentially what we’re working with are the communities that interact with International Space Station. So in many respects, it’s very conventional ethnographic data. I’m working with communities on Earth that are participating in life on the ISS on a daily basis.
David Edmonds: These are people doing what exactly — the people on earth, what kind of tasks do they have?
Victor Buchli: Various individuals. I mean, we have one individual here who’s essentially been the embedded anthropologist in the flight director training program at ESA in terms of how flight directors are trained. We have another individual who’s working on the so-called overview effect, the idea that if you are in space and you look down onto the Earth from space, you will experience a transformation of consciousness that produces a new understanding of man’s relationship to the Earth.
David Edmonds: But there’s only about six or seven people on the International Space Station. How many people are servicing that tiny community from Earth?
Victor Buchli: That would be in the hundreds or even thousands. It’d be hard to sort of like specify, because we speak about the various mission controls, Mission controls in Russia, mission controls in Europe, mission controls in the United States, and also support staff. It’s quite a large community of people who are in constant contact.
David Edmonds: Give us an idea of the variety of tasks that they have.
Victor Buchli: Everything from, you know, the launch site centers, where, essentially, you’re preparing for the launches, where you’re also training the astronauts, where you’re also sort of creating the experiments and loading the experiments on the International Space Station. How, in a sense, you monitor those experiments and those activities with the ground control and all the various backup support and research facilities that contribute to that. It’s an enormous operation, and it’s many hundreds of people.
David Edmonds: So we’ll talk about those people in a moment. Let’s first start with those few individuals who are on the space station. You’re an anthropologist — you’re interested in what kinds of things?
Victor Buchli: Well, we’re particularly interested in the relationship between the activities in the natural space station and activities on Earth, because it’s impossible for us to go up as anthropologists. It’s also very, very difficult for us to conduct interviews on the International Space Station, because astronauts’ time is very expensive and very much protected. So what we can do is actually work with the people who are engaging with them on Earth.
David Edmonds: They obviously live very isolated lives. They’re also living lives without gravity. What’s interesting about their existence?
Victor Buchli: Well, for us as anthropologists, what’s interesting is how it is we as humans have started to basically live in an environment where there is no gravity, and how the absence of gravity affects our understanding of various human institutions and human social relations. And more importantly, how the absence of gravity helps us understand our relationship to the environment, our modes of communication, our understanding of the materiality, but also our understanding of questions of sovereignty, religiosity and the like. A number of the sort of the key issues within the social sciences basically are questioned under the conditions of microgravity. It is the case within the social sciences, and particularly within anthropology, that gravity is just assumed. And so here we have an environment where suddenly this one single factor that controls absolutely everything that we do as humans on Earth is basically factored out. So how does that change our understanding of these human activities, these sorts of human institutions?
In my particular area, I’m focusing on the new kinds of materials that are produced in microgravity, and what happens when gravity is removed and other forces come into play when you start manufacturing new materials. And so that has a big impact when you’re starting to consider pharmaceuticals, for instance, new crystalline forms that are only possible in microgravity, typically, these crystalline forms start to grow with a certain degree of perfection that is not possible on earth.
David Edmonds: What about the relationship between the astronauts on the space station and their attitude to people back on planet Earth. Have you looked at that?
Victor Buchli: Well, one of the things we’re particularly interested in, one of the researchers on the project has been working on the overview effect, a name that’s given to the transformation of human consciousness, or at least the attribution of the transformation of human consciousness that arises when people are on the International Space Station, and looking down on the planet and seeing the planet as a whole. Typically, the overview effect is supposed to induce this new understanding about the humans’ relationship to the planet, one that is devoid of any political barriers. When you look down, you don’t see borders, you just see the earth in its totality, in a sense that produces a new kind of universalism.
Now the people who work in this area, promoters of the overview effect, are very keen to sort of bring this message to the wider population. People need to see the view. People need to understand it in order to basically create this new form of human consciousness, which is only possible by living in low Earth orbit. You’ve probably heard of the Bezos launches not too long ago. And you know people coming down, you know William Shatner, Katy Perry, all speak, really, to this idea of this sort of transformation of consciousness that is possible when you go up to space.
David Edmonds: You mentioned that several hundred had been in space. So the overview effect is now acknowledged, because when these people come back down, they have to answer questions. They have to fill in surveys. How do you establish whether the overview effect actually exists?
Victor Buchli: Well, I mean, there are some individuals who don’t quite believe in it at all, and there are individuals who have been up on the International Space Station who don’t particularly feel that this is something that has been transformative in any way. I mean, being on the International Space Station is a profoundly important and transformative event, but not necessarily in terms of the overview effects. But there are a number of people who do profoundly believe in the transformative effect of the overview effect, and that is responsible for basically organizing and inspiring many enthusiast communities across the world.
David Edmonds: I wonder how long this transformative effect lasts. I can imagine that you’ve been on the space station, it has this incredible effect on you. You see the planet, you see there’s no borders, and so on. You come back down, and then you have to go and buy a pint of milk, and suddenly the transformative effect recedes into the background. Have you looked at how long it lasts?
Victor Buchli: No, we haven’t looked at it in that sense, in terms of the psychological phenomenon. No, I think we’re more interested into the sort of communities that sort of arise around this idea over the overview effect, and the importance that they place on it, and how, in a sense, the overview effect might be achieved through various sort of means, either through education or the circulation of images or the creation of VR interfaces and the like are actually just simply going up there. But it’s just not the overview effect that may be one of these transformative processes. I mean, there are other processes, particularly in relation to what mine might consider to be very traditional religion or religiosity.
One of the researchers on the project is also working on looking at the circulation of icons, of Orthodox icons, as they leave from Earth, and they go up to the International Space Station, and then they do essentially what is considered to be an Orthodox cross procession around the planet, and then basically come back down. And then these icons are brought into terrestrial parishes and form part of terrestrial parish life,
David Edmonds: And they’re given a special privileged place because they’ve been around the planet?
Victor Buchli: Yeah. I mean, there is the idea of, essentially, these church processions that would normally happen within Orthodox communities. And in a sense, the procession, the idea of the pilgrimage, in a sense, is extended to low Earth orbit and the procession of these icons around the planet, and then when they come back down into Earth, in terms of having completed that procession.
David Edmonds: Let me ask you about the community that services those people on the International Space Station. How are they transformed by their relationship — on a daily basis — with space?
Victor Buchli: Yes, yes. I mean, one of the things that we’re quite interested in this project as well, too, is sort of not just sort of looking in terms of how astronauts and astronaut life and, you know, astronaut bodies are transformed. One of our colleagues is actually working on that specifically: he’s a medical anthropologist who’s trying to understand what the effects of microgravity are on our traditional assumptions of the human body and its significance.
On the contrary, we’ve also found is the way in which, in very subtle ways, living and participating within these space communities terrestrially also changes relationships on earth. How you live in a suburban home when you’re basically on call 24/7 in relation to activities on the International Space Station, starts to retransform, essentially, what is the typical suburban home. And in many respects, the typical suburban home is actually a very good place to be in space, because you don’t commute, you’re staying at home, you don’t go into an office, you don’t come back, you do everything literally on your bedside or sort of wandering in the middle of the night. And all of this can be more easily regulated within a suburban home, but also even very traditional sort of office spaces are transformed because office spaces, or office parks, are really the locations where a lot of the activities, particularly in relation to research and science and manufacturing, take place. And so, the typical suburban office park suddenly becomes part of the space infrastructure. So suddenly, these very ordinary places, and that we have terrestrially, once they are part of the space infrastructure, are also transformed.
David Edmonds: Transformed in what way? I can see how one type of transformation is that space doesn’t have time, and so suddenly you’re in your home or you’re in your office, and time begins to lose its meaning.
Victor Buchli: Well, yeah, I mean, you’d move to a different clock. You may be in one time zone, a space station is typically in GMT. Your life cycle has to be adjusted accordingly. The point being is that when you are working and living in space, both on Earth and in low Earth orbit, all of these sort of like daily activities, and our understanding of daily life changes as a result of the interaction between these two spheres.
David Edmonds: The people who are part of the support team, the hundreds of people here on Earth, are they also subject to the overview effect? When you talk about the overview effect, are we mainly talking about the people who’ve actually seen planet from space?
Victor Buchli: Well, the idea of the overview effect is that it’s only possible if you actually go up there. But there is a sort of sense of enthusiasm that sort of pervades all these various communities in terms of, you know, the higher purpose, essentially, of what it means as a species, to essentially leave the planet of origin and begin to sort of inhabit low Earth orbit, with the idea of moving further along, either to the moon or to Mars and further afield.
David Edmonds: What’s your most interesting finding from your research so far?
Victor Buchli: The findings are varied for us as anthropologists. I think what we find more interesting in terms of the very subtle ways in which the body or even our own communities, in a sense, are reconfigured as a result of interacting with low Earth orbit. It’s not so much what’s happening up there, but actually it’s what’s happening down here that is transformative.
And usually these things are really quite small. When you think about manufacturing, it’s about how things have changed at the microscopic level, and how those changes in the microscopic level then have profound changes, say, for humans. Couple of examples. One is, say, in pharmaceuticals, Merck Pharmaceuticals, key producer of Keytruda, which is one of the most important cancer drugs treatments, is also has been produced in low Earth orbit. So there is a now a move to sort of create a space enhanced Keytruda that is actually produced under the conditions of microgravity, that actually has a superior crystalline structure. It’s the difference between having a globby crystalline structure as opposed to a perfectly dispersed crystalline structure. So that means, in terms of treatment, instead of sitting in a hospital over two or three days getting an infusion for your drugs, you just get an injection. And that, of course, then profoundly changes the nature of health.
Another, an example of an artifact that is beginning to emerge is in relation to LambdaVision, a company that is in the United States that is producing artificial retina. You can only produce these artificial retina under the conditions of micro gravity and then bring them back down onto Earth. And now they’re basically in the process of FDA trials in the United States. I believe right now they are in the process of animal trials, with the view for basically being trialed on humans very soon. And so again, the idea is, of course, that it’s actually you have these artificial retina which are there to sort of help with macular degeneration, that then will be able to give us our sight back later on.
David Edmonds: So I can see how there are lots of medical and industrial benefits that are going to accrue from the space station and research on the space station. Beyond that, why is this anthropological research important?
Victor Buchli: Well, one of the reasons why I say, especially when I talk to people in the space community, is the fact that as a species, this is the first time we’ve inhabited continuously low Earth orbit — for about 25 years. So, in many respects, low Earth orbit represents a new part of Earth that, in and of itself, is of its anthropological interest to understand essentially how our society are changing in relation to this expansion of this nexus of inhabitation that has moved from the planet further outward into low Earth orbit and beyond.
David Edmonds: Would you like to go to space?
Victor Buchli: Right now? I think I would definitely like to go up once and come back down again. Yes.
David Edmonds: Victor Buchli, thank you very much indeed.
Victor Buchli: Thank you for having me.