Geographies of place-making in Antarctica: an ethnographic approach

Abstract

The article implements an ethnographic perspective to explore new modes of engaging with the geopolitics of place in Antarctica. It does so by entertaining the idea that a youth science education initiative undertaken every year in Chile is exemplary of distinctive forms of soft power, where cultural diplomacy plays a significant role alongside scientific practices and international cooperation in the Antarctic. Drawing on critical socio-spatial approaches to conceptualising place and the practices of place-making, the article scales down [or sideways] the discussion of Antarctic geopolitics to an ethnographic account of embodied and situated everyday practices in Fildes Peninsula, King George Island. Visual ethnographic work was undertaken during two short field seasons in 2012 and 2013 at Julio Escudero Station (Chile) and surrounding areas comprising a cluster of national scientific stations. The work was undertaken as part of the annual School Antarctic Expedition (EAE in Spanish), a programme arranged and organized by the Chilean Antarctic Institute (INACH). Employing the EAE as a methodological strategy and integrating interludes of ethnographic writing, the article argues that this activity, while still promoting national interests, enacts as a particular mode of cultural mediation, moving past propaganda models and top-down discourses of sovereignty, while endeavouring to promote science into wider publics and foster intercultural dialogue in the Antarctic as an indispensable aspect of Antarctic everyday life. The article concludes by venturing into how the effects of an ethnography of Antarctic place can be then scaled up to signal that attention to the “banal geopolitics” of everyday life in Antarctica can be relevant in providing fresh perspectives on large-scale (national and global) debates in polar geopolitics and could be taken more into account in emerging debates about the future challenges in Antarctica.