Current Institutional Affiliation
Assistant Professor, School of Global and International Studies, Indiana University / Bloomington

Award Information

International Dissertation Research Fellowship 2005
Institutional Affiliation (at time of award):
Anthropology, University of California / Santa Cruz
Policy and Practice in Antarctic Specially Managed Areas

What are the practices-discursive and otherwise-through which scientists and other Antarctic community members succeed at making Antarctica a model of environmentalism as well as a place of "peace and science"? To answer this question, I will conduct twelve months of fieldwork in Christchurch, New Zealand, a central site of Antarctic culture, and on a research expedition near Scott Base, Antarctica. I will examine the lived intricacies of this international environmental space and people's relationship to Antarctic environmental management by mapping, examining, and traveling within the networks that scientists and other Antarctic community members form. Since Antarctica's primary human activity is research, I will study scientists not only as the arbiters of science but as a community using their specialties to exert authority in environmental management and governance structures. Antarctic scientists are charged, under the Antarctic Treaty, to be self-regulatory, and to inspect each other's environmental standards. Technological innovations have allowed scientists to self-regulate for environmental standards compliance, but I hypothesize that Antarctic scientific culture is the most powerful tool for regulating Antarctica, and that this culture also strongly influences the continent's regulatory policies.

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