Towards an anthropology of gravity: Emotion and embodiment in microgravity environments

Human space travel has largely been understood through a physiological and psychological lens but rarely sociologically or anthropologically. Drawing on astronaut testimony, experiences of microgravity environments, laboratory experiments and art practice this paper argues that gravity, or rather its absence, offers a unique vantage point through which to consider the human relationship to emotion, cognition, and the curation of social relations via experiences of the body in different gravitational environments. The analysis draws attention to the contextual, embodied and contingent moments of social relations through using a holistic materialist position with theories of affect and work on the anthropology of the body. An anthropology of gravity recognises the ethno-physical conditions of space-living by showing that microgravity environments disturb the habitual affective landscapes of human interaction. It suggests that body, emotion, social relations and environment can be better understood when they are contextualised by the underlying forces that operate subtly throughout them; forces that are more fully understood once they are no longer present. •One's ability to ‘know how to feel’ in social interactions is informed from the ethno-physical conditions of the environment.•Physics, in addition to cultural context, influences the anthropology of the body in movement.•Gravity is positioned as a force that underpins the ways the human body can convey emotion.•Microgravity affords opportunity to study how affect and emotion can fail in different physical conditions.•Microgravity distorts normative body alignments, affects and gestures, and can impact upon social relations.