Searching for Answers at the End of the Earth

• In Event: Final Frontiers

English Abstract

“Searching for Answers at the End of the Earth” focuses on the history of ice and sediment core science in Antarctica, with an emphasis on the role major research institutions play in establishing political authority and sovereignty through Big Science projects and the establishment of environmental impact statements. I propose that the socio-political control of Antarctica was not established through settler colonialism, but instead by what I refer to as scientific colonialism - a process through which political authority and physical sovereignty claims are made and enforced through the establishment of research outposts occupied by scientists from major research institutions.
Climate science in Antarctica has significantly expanded our temporal understanding of Earth's climate history, in doing so providing much of the scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change. This science has been politicized in both the past and the present. For example, Margaret Thatcher famously pointed to the British discovery of the hole in the O-zone layer as justification for continued British occupation of the Falkland Islands following the Falkland War with Argentina. By looking at my home university's Sub Zero research lab and Subglacial Antarctic Lakes Scientific Access (SALSA) lab, I intend to show the role major research institutions and ice and sediment core science have played in the establishment of political authority in Antarctica, and how that same process may be used to establish authority during the colonization of space.

Author

• Travis Carioscia, Montana State University