(c) John Goodwin, 2026
Orwell and Space
In Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) Orwell describes his encounter with a street artist or ‘screever’ who plied his trade in London’s Embankment. Orwell’s account of the artist Bozo captures the wonder and beauty of space and how Bozo uses it as a source of inspiration, joy and entertainment.
“’I’m what they call a serious screever. I don’t draw in blackboard chalks like these others, I use proper colours the same as what painters use; bloody expensive they are, especially the reds….
Bozo seemed an interesting man, and I was anxious to see more of him. That evening I went down to the Embankment to meet him, as he had arranged to take Paddy and myself to a lodging-house south of the river. Bozo washed his pictures off the pavement and counted his takings—it was about sixteen shillings, of which he said twelve or thirteen would be profit. We walked down into Lambeth. Bozo limped slowly, with a queer crablike gait, half sideways, dragging his smashed foot behind him. He carried a stick in each hand and slung his box of colours over his shoulder. As we were crossing the bridge he stopped in one of the alcoves to rest. He fell silent for a minute or two, and to my surprise, I saw that he was looking at the stars. He touched my arm and pointed to the sky with his stick.
‘Say, will you look at Aldebaran! Look at the colour. Like a—great blood orange!’
From the way he spoke, he might have been an art critic in a picture gallery. I was astonished. I confessed that I did not know which Aldebaran was—indeed, I had never even noticed that the stars were of different colours. Bozo began to give me some elementary hints on astronomy, pointing out the chief constellations. He seemed concerned at my ignorance. I said to him, surprised:
‘You seem to know a lot about stars.’
‘Not a great lot. I know a bit, though. I got two letters from the Astronomer Royal thanking me for writing about meteors. Now and again I go out at night and watch for meteors. The stars are a free show; it don’t cost anything to use your eyes.’
Sociological and Anthropological Problems of Space*.
Ever since early humans looked to the skies and used primitive technologies to capture meaning from the celestial system, through to the 1960s race for space and onto recent wealthy space adventures attempting to colonise space as a place of leisure, space has had a significant impact on the ‘everyday life’ of those on earth. Yet, despite the importance (even ubiquity) of the universe, space, space exploration, and space technology, these remain underexplored research themes within a sociological or anthropological framework beyond discrete aspects of science and technology studies. Yet sociology and anthropology offer useful, analytical tools and concepts to enhance our understanding of space and how it has been structured and continues to shape everyday lives.
(c) John Goodwin, 2026
My aim is to examine space through a sociological lens to enable detailed critical analysis, interpretation, and exploration of four overlapping challenges central to space’s everydayness: ‘sociogenesis’, structure, representation, and consumption.
- Sociogenesis. Using the processual/historical-comparative framework of Norbert Elias, we seek to understand how the intricate relationships between humans and space have changed and transformed over time. A central question of Elias’s work is, how did ‘this’ come to be? For example, how did we arrive at a point in our civilisation, and what are the attendant changes and transformations that have taken place socially, where space has been transformed from something to be observed as a ‘thing’ of wonder, to a perceived endless resource to be exploited for the benefit of humanity?
- Structure. How have our interactions with and involvement in space been structured by social characteristics? How can we understand space via the lens of identity, gender, race, class, or other social characteristics?
- Representation. How is space represented culturally in a way that offers meaning to people? For example, we can consider humanity’s first interactions/thoughts on space (early philosophers, earlier depictions of space (Bayeux tapestry etc.) and their social significance. How can space be understood via film, literature, art, and poetry? How have people used creative practices and media to reflect upon the ‘unknown’, and the fantastical elements of space? In turn, how did these translate into socially significant meanings and behaviours? Cultural artefacts are an excellent source of data for reflecting upon long-term social processes and documenting social transformation and change.
- Consumption. The race for space, or more recent debates around ‘space futures’ and the privatisation of space, are undergirded by a notion that space is a ‘place’ and a resource that can be further utilised to drive patterns of human consumption. From emergent satellite communication technologies through to space, travel and tourism, ‘consumption’ is key to understanding human involvement in space. Yet, not all of society benefits equally from these extended patterns of space-based consumption, with current trends seemingly reinforcing existing globalised inequalities. How can we understand this?
*something I wrote for the University to outline this as a research theme which very much reflects my orientation and interests.
(c) John Goodwin 2025
Cosmic Sociology: Sociological Intersections of Biography, History and Space
University of Leicester, 23 May 2024, Talk notes
- Every civilisation has attributed to and derived meaning from space. Whether this is the magical, mythical, or spiritual, whether it’s the rules for life and guidance.
- Whether it’s the home of gods, whether it’s rules for life and guidance. whether it’s time or direction, whether it’s time or direction. Whether it seasons or months.
- We, as a species of attributed celestial objects with names that have meaning to us, have engaged with space for millennia. We give phases of the moon different names. We have festivals that celebrate space, the moon or the planets within it
- In many respects. In many respects, space only has meaning because we attribute meaning to it.
- Yet we also live in a time when the scale of scientific knowledge and our level of understanding are so great that they become a challenge.
- The number of conversations I’ve had with people who say they are fascinated by space but simply can’t get their head around something so massive and seemingly complex.
- For me, one of the interesting challenges as a sociologist is (to coin a phrase), to descend the ladder of abstraction
- To think about how the cosmic translates into the biographical, how the micro and the cosmic are linked. How do we derive meaning as individuals from something so massive?
- Micro mess macro cosmic or nano micro meso macro mega ….cosmic
Thoughts and challenges that humanising space has for sociology. Everything is sociology, including the intersections of history and biography – a collapse or expansion of scale. - Our biographies intersect with a time in history when we can see backwards beyond life itself, beyond what was known as the universe, back to the very dawn of time and space itself. We live in an age where the biographical sense of past, present and future and the future interlink
- Epistemological fallacy of science fiction – HG Wells – who would have believed watching – we are watching space Webb
- Power elites use space as entertainment and for personal profit, not for the public good. A branch of entertainment
- Our understanding of space is not just about the ‘science’ but about the meanings that we create and attribute to it it’s about the cultural artefacts that we produce that relate to it.
- How those cultural artefacts intersect with biographies reflects the time we are in. Taken together this points to SPACE as the intersection of history and biography, and we gain insights from those biographical stories
Imagining a Black Hole
(c) John Goodwin, 2025.
Thought piece: The sociological story of space travel