CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2019
| Author | Voski, Anaïs |
|---|---|
| Title | The Ecological Significance of the Overview Effect: Environmental Attitudes and Behaviours in Astronauts |
| Summary | In the context of the 21st century’s intensifying ecological crisis and the New Space Age, this year’s 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing provides a functional framework for investigating potentially unknown connections between environmentalism and human space exploration. Limited evidence in the existing literature suggests that the Overview Effect – the cognitive shift in awareness experienced by astronauts as a result of seeing Earth from outer space – may contain much greater ecological dimensions than has been previously implied. Based on 14 first-hand interviews with astronauts, this study utilizes interpretive phenomenological analysis to qualitatively demonstrate that the Overview Effect has a distinct ecological significance that results in positive changes to astronauts’ environmental attitudes and behaviours. Besides this change, the results qualitatively map the breadth and depth of astronauts’ present environmental attitudes and behaviours, which has also not been done prior to this study. The outer space perspective of Earth, which includes negative perceptual views of anthropogenic ecological destruction on the surface of the planet, is shown to add a new and additional element to environmentalism, and as such discourse analysis is used to demonstrate how the ecological impulse concept is useful for advancing theoretical formulations of how spaceflight affects environmental attitudes. Furthermore, an expanded definition of the astroenvironmentalism concept is proposed to encapsulate this distinct form of environmentalism, to facilitate more straightforward discussions on the topic, and to make this phenomenon and form of environmentalism more relevant and accessible to a wider audience. |
| Supervisor | Watt, Alan |
| Department | Environment Sciences and Policy MSc |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2019/voski_anais.pdf |
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