New Space: Developing New Methodologies for Research on the Future

大卫·瓦伦丁博士(明尼苏达大学双城分校)将对美国商业外层空间企业(“NewSpace”)的支持者的叙事实践进行研究，以调查想象地球以外的人类并以特定方式这样做的含义；以及将对未来的想象作为一个社会和集体过程进行研究的可能性。为了进行这项研究，瓦伦丁将发展一种社会科学方法来分析想象力和未来。研究网站将包括空间会议、空间站、发射活动、电话会议以及在线博客和网络广播。他将录制演讲，采访主要参与者和观察员，并进行现场和参与者观察。这些数据将被转录，并成为相互关联的数据库的基础，这些数据库将使用非分级编码方案为主题、话语策略(包括类比、假设、条件句、证据和专业语域)和网络编码。社会科学家忽视了“空间”、“想象”和“未来”作为研究的场所，认为它们缺乏真正的社会性或物质意义。瓦伦丁的研究将为研究这些主题开发新的方法；研究结果将帮助社会科学家确定认真对待这些主题可能会学到什么，因为这些主题对新太空人自己的日常工作，以及整个社会，今天乃至未来都具有重要意义。

Dr. David Valentine (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities) will conduct research on the narrative practices of proponents of U.S. commercial outer space enterprises ("NewSpace") to investigate the implications of imagining humanness beyond Earth, and doing so in a particular way; and the possibilities for studying imaginations of the future as a social and collective process. In order to carry out this research, Valentine will develop a social scientific approach to the analysis of imagination and the future. Research sites will include include space conferences, spaceports, launch events, teleconferences, and online blogs and webcasts. He will record presentations, interview key participants and observers, and carry out both spot and participant observation. These data will be transcribed and become the basis for interrelated data bases, which will be coded for themes using a non-hierarchical coding scheme; for discourse strategies (incluidng analogies, hypotheticals, conditionals, evidentials, and professional registers) and for networks. Social scientists have ignored "space," "imagination," and "the future" as sites of investigation, seeing them as empty of real sociality or material significance. Valentine's research will develop new methodologies for studying these topics; and findings will help social scientists determine what might learned by taking these topics seriously, as consequential both materially, for the day-to-day work of New Spacers themselves, and also the society at large, today and possibly in the future.