Exercising Agency in an International Socioscientific Controversy: The Use of Human and Material Agents to Assert Canada’s Sovereignty in the Arctic

Abstract

What determines a nation’s sovereignty over a particular territory? This question is now the subject of a heated debate on the international political scene, with global warming having rendered previously unreachable Arctic resources accessible to the five countries that have territorial claims in the far North: Canada, the United States, Russia, Denmark, and Norway. By building on the concepts of human and material agency, I demonstrate how both human and material agents represent the collective of Canada and thus give the Canadian government a material presence in the Arctic. This presence is key to actors such as the Canadian prime minister who are making the case for Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic region. This article therefore shows that the agency of participants in deliberation over socioscientific issues is largely influenced by the action of both other humans and material entities.