The Technocratic Antarctic: An Ethnography of Scientific Expertise and Environmental Governance

by Jessica O'Reilly

Overview

The Technocratic Antarctic is an ethnographic account of the scientists and policymakers who work on Antarctica. In a place with no indigenous people, Antarctic scientists and policymakers use expertise as their primary model of governance. Scientific research and policymaking are practices that inform each other, and the Antarctic environment—with its striking beauty, dramatic human and animal lives, and specter of global climate change—not only informs science and policy but also lends Antarctic environmentalism a particularly technocratic patina.

Jessica O’Reilly conducted most of her research for this book in New Zealand, home of the "Antarctic Gateway" city of Christchurch, and on an expedition to Windless Bight, Antarctica, with the New Zealand Antarctic Program. O’Reilly also follows the journeys Antarctic scientists and policymakers take to temporarily "Antarctic" places such as science conferences, policy workshops, and the international Antarctic Treaty meetings in Scotland, Australia, and India. Competing claims of nationalism, scientific disciplines, field experiences, and personal relationships among Antarctic environmental managers disrupt the idea of a utopian epistemic community. O’Reilly focuses on what emerges in Antarctica among the complicated and hybrid forms of science, sociality, politics, and national membership found there. The Technocratic Antarctic unfolds the historical, political, and moral contexts that shape experiences of and decisions about the Antarctic environment.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801456923
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	01/17/2017
Series:	Expertise: Cultures and Technologies of Knowledge
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	1,154,788
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Jessica O’Reilly is Assistant Professor in the Department of International Studies at Indiana University Bloomington.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. The Imagined Antarctic

2. The Environmental History of the Antarctic

3. Sensing the Ice

4. Samples and Specimens at Antarctic Biosecurity Borders

5. Managing Antarctic Science in an Epistemic Technocracy

6. Tectonic Time and Sacred Geographies in the Larsemann Hills

7. Charismatic Data and Climate Change

Conclusion: The Technocratic Governance of Nature

What People are Saying About This

Ben Orlove

The anthropology of science, born with Bruno Latour's Laboratory Life, now enters its second phase with Jessica O’Reilly’s The Technocratic Antarctic. She moves from the laboratory to the field, from networks that link scientists, instruments, objects, and texts to networks that link scientists, policymakers, and entire landscapes. She expands Latour’s view of scientists as humans who observe and think by showing how they feel. Her accounts of men and women at the edge of the world on Antarctic ice lie at the center of new approaches to science.

Martha Lampland

The Technocratic Antarctic tackles important questions about how nature is discovered and policy crafted, intimately intertwined practices binding multiple communities of scientists and policymakers. Jessica O'Reilly has chosen a fascinating field site: the continent of Antarctica and its various outposts—scientific labs, environmental management agencies, Greenpeace mobilizations, the airport in New Zealand, and international meeting rooms scattered across the globe. O'Reilly chronicles five engrossing case studies that illustrate the ways in which science and policy are necessarily imbricated in the most mundane activities and the most monumental.

Editorial Reviews

This book offers a focused 'ethnographic account' of those who provide scientific expertise and environmental governance on all matters pertaining to Antarctica. In O'Reilly's work, the scientific and policy practices described emerge from 'historical, moral, and political contexts' that help determine the scope and nature of managing Antarctica.... This book serves as a fine resource for those seeking more information about Antarctica and aspects of its environmental policy. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals.

CHOICE - R. A. Delgado Jr.

This book offers a focused 'ethnographic account' of those who provide scientific expertise and environmental governance on all matters pertaining to Antarctica. In O'Reilly's work, the scientific and policy practices described emerge from 'historical, moral, and political contexts' that help determine the scope and nature of managing Antarctica.... This book serves as a fine resource for those seeking more information about Antarctica and aspects of its environmental policy. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals.

--R. A. Delgado Jr., National Institutes of Health "CHOICE"

From the Publisher

"The anthropology of science, born with Bruno Latour's Laboratory Life, now enters its second phase with Jessica O’Reilly’s The Technocratic Antarctic. She moves from the laboratory to the field, from networks that link scientists, instruments, objects, and texts to networks that link scientists, policymakers, and entire landscapes. She expands Latour’s view of scientists as humans who observe and think by showing how they feel. Her accounts of men and women at the edge of the world on Antarctic ice lie at the center of new approaches to science."

Ben Orlove

"The Technocratic Antarctic tackles important questions about how nature is discovered and policy crafted, intimately intertwined practices binding multiple communities of scientists and policymakers. Jessica O'Reilly has chosen a fascinating field site: the continent of Antarctica and its various outposts—scientific labs, environmental management agencies, Greenpeace mobilizations, the airport in New Zealand, and international meeting rooms scattered across the globe. O'Reilly chronicles five engrossing case studies that illustrate the ways in which science and policy are necessarily imbricated in the most mundane activities and the most monumental."

Martha Lampland