Against Otherworldliness: 'Placing' the Arctic in the Anthropocene

• In Event: Science, Technology and Society in the Polar Regions

Abstract

My proposed paper compares two moments of technological and scientific activity on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard. While seemingly disparate both temporally and intentionally, I use these two historical moments as an opportunity to explore, and re-consider, the purported ‘otherworldliness’ that is often associated with the region.

I first consider the marble mining town of Ny London, established by Briton Ernest Mansfield in 1908 when the archipelago was ‘terra nullius.’ Mansfield hoped to incorporate the rare and exceptional Arctic marble into the growing global system of capital but, when the rock was brought south, the thawing permafrost destroyed it. I then consider a scientific expedition that took place a century later, when in 2007 NASA launched AMASE—the Arctic Mars Analog Svalbard Expedition. For NASA, the “extreme environment” of Svalbard is quite literally ‘otherworldly,’ seen as an opportunity to experience and imagine a different planet.

Whether terra nullius or extra-terrestrial, Svalbard is seen by these actors as spatially and geologically Other. Challenging this logic, I use these examples to consider the relationship between place and scientific knowledge-making. Advancing the spatial turn in STS, I move beyond lab/field dichotomies to consider how place is “a resource scientists use to create their scientific objects as such” (Messeri, Placing Outer Space, p.15). I then argue that for both Mansfield and NASA, Svalbard is used to produce two different but important senses of “the planetary.” I then suggest that considering different registers of the planetary can be useful in understanding the scale of the Anthropocene.

Author

• Alexis Rider, University of Pennsylvania