The Great Game in Antarctica: Britain and the 1959 Antarctic Treaty

This article is concerned with Britain's political and territorial interests in the Antarctic in the first half of the twentieth century, culminating in the signing of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty. Using in part the diaries of a Foreign Office advisor, Dr Brian Roberts, attention is given as to how successive British governments and their officials sustained a presence in the remote polar continent. Rival claimants in the form of Argentina and Chile made the task all the more difficult. Mapping and surveying were essential in maintaining British sovereignty even if the end results were at times disappointing. The article concludes by suggesting that the Antarctic Treaty, while important in promoting international scientific collaboration, did not manage to resolve the political and territorial disputes surrounding the Antarctic. Arguably, the 1982 Falklands War and its aftermath provided a vivid reminder that Britain's most southerly possessions still remain deeply contested.     

Britain and the British Antarctic Territory in the wider geopolitics of the Antarctic and the Southern Ocean

Britain's contemporary and future relationship with the British Antarctic Territory and the wider region is the subject matter of this article. In the aftermath of the ill‐fated plans for a merger of British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and the National Oceanography Centre, it is timely to ask how the UK projects influence and secures its scientific, resource and strategic interests. The contemporary Antarctic is increasingly characterized by tension over resource management and conservation politics as Antarctic Treaty parties disagree, both in private and public, over the purpose of legal instruments and the regulation of activities such as fishing and marine conservation. While we do not predict the collapse of the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS), our analysis suggests that the effectiveness and legitimacy of the ATS is increasingly under challenge. The United Kingdom's position as a claimant state and original signatory to the Antarctic Treaty is complicated by the presence of counter‐claimants (Argentina and Chile) and a wider preoccupation with other overseas territories, such as South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands and the Falkland Islands. Polar science, carried out by BAS and other British agents, remains critical not only for maintaining the UK's ‘soft power’ but also increasingly for cementing a ‘strategic presence’ in the Antarctic. The article ends with a cautionary note: scientific excellence is no longer sufficient to guarantee geopolitical/strategic interests and there is growing evidence that claimant and non‐claimant states alike are no longer regarding Antarctica as an area that will remain free of intensifying and diversifying resource exploitation.     

Science, sovereignty and nation: Canada and the legacy of the International Geophysical Year, 1957–1958

This paper considers some of the Canadian scientific and political responses to the International Geophysical Year (IGY) 1957–1958. Histories of the IGY have hitherto often concentrated on scientific activity in Antarctica and advances in satellite technology, made manifest in the Soviet launch of Sputnik. Such histories hint at a contradiction at the heart of the IGY – attempts at international scientific cooperation were always concurrent with cold war national rivalries. These tensions were not limited to the superpowers and the IGY helped focus scientific competition between other national polities, including Canada. By examining the circumstances surrounding the creation of the Government of Canada's Polar Continental Shelf Project in April 1958, the paper investigates attempts to mobilize a pan-Canadian nationalism in response to perceived American and Soviet incursions upon territorial sovereignty during the IGY. The PCSP's ostensible purpose was to collect geophysical data for US satellite launch tests in the Canadian High Arctic. However, by placing the founding of the PCSP within the political context of the First UN Conference on the Law of the Sea in 1958, and the unprecedented electoral success of the Progressive Conservatives across Canada during the same year, the paper develops a more sensitive appreciation of the complicated historical geographies of the IGY.     

The IGY and the ice sheet: surveying Antarctica

This paper considers the significance of the International Geophysical Year (IGY) for the development of new knowledge of the shape of the Antarctic bed surface and the ice sheet that covers it. It also situates the Antarctic geophysical work done during the IGY within a longer history that begins in the immediate post-WWII period and extends up to the 1970s. The paper pays particular attention to the US IGY seismic traverses, which were the centrepiece of US IGY activities in Antarctica. We argue that these traverses should be understood as part of a broader set of geopolitical, military and governmental strategies that the USA pursued through the IGY and afterwards. In this sense we agree with other students of Cold War science who suggest that the IGY was far from being the beginning of the end for geopolitics in Antarctica. Instead we demonstrate that US scientific activities in Antarctica during the IGY and after were a form of geopolitics in themselves.     

Science in Antarctica Intellectual and Physical Adventure

Abstract

Antarctica is a geographical region and Antarctic science is therefore multidisciplinary, the main areas of research being concerned with the continent's geological base, the superimposed ice-cap, the atmosphere above it and their external relationship. Each of these research areas is interdisciplinary: the study of its outstanding problem – the history of the Antarctic ice sheet – requires contributions from meteorology, oceanography, glaciology, geology, chemistry and physics; and its future behaviour will he determined by external events, including the consumption of fossil fuels on other continents. Research in Antarctica is given added piquancy by the continent's unique environment and rigorous climate which retain their attractive character even though modern technological developments have removed many elements of discomfort and danger. The region is also singular in its political nature and scientist have a particularly close relationship with their governments through the Antarctic Treaty.     

Differential locational harmony: the Cristo Redentor statue in the Uspallata Pass

On the surface, the Christ of the Andes monument erected in 1904 on the border between Argentina and Chile is dedicated to peace. Scratch that surface and the locational harmony appears highly differential, matching previous research by geographers and political scientists demonstrating a peculiar intensity of Argentine nationalism and Chilean defensiveness. The path of this differential harmony is traced and deciphered from a variety of primary, secondary and vernacular Internet sources. Argentina takes a much more intense and patriotic view of the monument while Chile is more skeptical and defensive toward the “peace” represented. Only during the last 5 years have the statue and the pass produced true acts of bi-national understanding, but such activities exhibit more local than national feeling. The regional and international diffusion of political and religious ideas fostered by the statue are also explored. The statue has never truly represented peace for these countries and the effectiveness of such bi-national monuments among rivals is questioned.     

Australia's Antarctic agenda

Australia has had a long connection with, and significant national interests in, the Southern Ocean and Antarctica. The Australian Antarctic Territory comprises 42 per cent of Antarctica's landmass. Australia is not only a claimant state and original signatory to the Antarctic Treaty but has played a significant role in the development of what is termed the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS). This article aims to provide an overview of Australia's key policy interests and government policy goals towards Antarctica, including its commitment to the ATS. In examining key policy objectives we note that despite continuity and development of these objectives, significant changes and challenges have arisen in the period 1984–2006. It is these challenges that will help frame Australia's Antarctic agenda over the next 20 years and beyond.     

Immigration, the internet, and spaces of politics

This paper examines the kinds of politics that are enabled by the Internet with respect to immigrants to the United States; its primary concern is whether the political spaces created through the Internet can foster incorporation of immigrants in the political community or whether the political activity on the Internet seems likely to lead to a more fractionalized political community in which the position of immigrants remains marginal. This exploration is based first on a random sample of web-sites about immigration and second on a more targeted sample of sites aimed specifically at two immigrant groups. The analysis of web-sites indicates that there is a great deal of information about immigrants on the Internet, and that most of it seems to be directed to service providers, policy makers, and researchers. There is relatively little discussion by or about immigrants, and beyond a few notable sites, there is almost no sign of mobilization. To the extent that the Internet is used to create new political spaces, it may not be spaces for deliberation and discussion. Rather, the political spaces seem to be informational spaces in which the politics are not easily or directly read.

A-Awda, The Palestine Right to return Coalition, is a broad-based, non-partisan, global, democratic association of grassroots activists and organizational representatives. Our objective is to educate the international community to fulfill its legal and moral obligations vis-à-vis the Palestinian people. Al-Awda develops, coordinates, supports and guides, as needed, global and local grassroots initiatives for action related to Palestinian rights. Al-Awda, http://www.al-awda.org as visited 11 July 2002.

“Why I won’t serve Sharon.”

“Maaad Abu-Ghazalah, Arab-American Candidate for US Congress, San Francisco.”

“A Statement on the ‘War on Terror’ from Prominent Americans.”

“What Bush Doesn’t Know about Palestine.”

“Memorial to 418 Palestinian Villages Which Were Destroyed.”

Headlines on Café Arabica, http://www.cafearabica.com as visited 11 July, 2002.

The Internet is widely heralded as opening spaces for a wide variety of politics and political voices. But as it is praised for its inclusiveness, it is also pilloried for enabling the fragmentation of political opinion without providing a forum in which common political ground can be identified or consensus achieved. In the former view, the Internet fosters greater inclusion in democratic debate and political community. In the latter view, it contributes to a weakening of the bonds that are necessary for a political community to reach consensus and to provide guidance for democratic governance.Consider the examples in the epigraph to the paper. Al-Awda is a political movement devoted to securing the right of return for Palestinian refugees and their families. It organizes marches and demonstrations in cities across the US and Western Europe. One reason for the apparent mismatch between the locations of the “problem” and of the “action” is that many – though by no means all – of the participants in the marches are immigrants from the Middle East or they are of Arab descent. While the organization is based in Massachusetts, most of the mobilization through it occurs on-line, and it is not clear that there is either a permanent staff or regular meetings, other than the marches. Café Arabica provides a venue for discussion of a wide range of topics related to Arab culture and politics. Much like the romanticized café society, discussion can be lively and seems to include a wide range of participants and viewpoints. Café Arabica includes an on-line discussion forum, again with many of the participants apparently either being from the Middle East or the descendants of immigrants from the region. It labels itself as an Arab-American on-line community.These two web-sites were not chosen at random. They both relate to immigrants – social groups that are often not able to participate in political discussion and debate in their host countries. As such, these sites exemplify both the possibilities and the limitations that commentators have identified when they discuss the Internet and its role in fostering political dialogue. Some people would see these sites as signs of a group that wants to use the political process in one country to influence events in another country. Some people will read these sites as a an indication that at least one immigrant group – if not all immigrants – refuse assimilation, which is the basis of incorporation into the American political community. Still others will view these sites as attempts to incorporate a set of political voices and agents into a more inclusive political community. This paper examines the use of the Internet in political debate and mobilization around immigrants in the United States. It considers the nature of political discussion on the Internet and the agents involved in it. The overarching concern is whether the Internet fosters a more inclusive political community or whether it leads to alternative political spaces that remain unincorporated with respect to the political community of the host society.The paper is organized in four sections. The first provides a background for the debates about immigrants, the Internet, and politics. The second section is an overview of the theoretical debates about the public sphere as a political space in which members of a polity can participate and the ways in which the Internet may transform that space. The third section highlights some of the key issues that condition migrants’ acceptance into a polity, focusing primarily on the United States. With these sections serving as background, the final section of the paper explores political discussion on the Internet by and about immigrants. This exploration is based first on a random sample of web-sites about immigration and second on a more targeted sample of sites aimed specifically at two immigrant groups. The goal in these examinations is to evaluate the extent to which the Internet can provide the basis of a political space in which issues related to the incorporation of immigrants can be debated or whether it is a space that fosters a more fractionalized politics unlikely to lead to greater political incorporation of immigrants.     

Overcoming the Resource Curse: Reform and the Rentier State in Chile and Argentina, 1973–2000

This article examines the possibility of overcoming the resource curse through case studies of the appropriation and use of mining rents derived from public–private joint ventures in Argentina and Chile in the period 1973–2000. In particular, it examines how two similar cases of sectoral liberalization resulted in divergent outcomes: the deployment of rent‐appropriation strategies around multinational corporations in Argentina and an innovative and productivist approach based on joint ventures with foreign capital in Chile. The article argues that while the liberalization of the sector created similar opportunities for appropriating rents in both countries, the existence of strong civil society pressures in Chile constrained rent‐appropriation and waste by the state, in comparison to the absence of such pressures in Argentina.     

The Treaty of Waitangi in Contemporary New Zealand Politics

This paper identifies three discourses that are prominent in contemporary Treaty of Waitangi policy debate, each with significantly different implications for Maori political status within the modern nation-state. At one extreme the Treaty's significance is exaggerated by overemphasis on partnership as an implicit Treaty principle. At another extreme the Treaty's significance is understated by an assimilationist position that denies the Treaty's relevance to Indigenous rights which, in turn, imposes serious constraint on the extent to which partnership can actually develop into comprehensive policy practice. An alternative position is one that sees the Treaty, which is supported in international law, as affirming a twofold conception of citizenship as the basis of both individual and collective Maori rights.     

The geopolitics of Antarctic governance: sovereignty and strategic denial in Australia's Antarctic policy

The governance of Antarctica has re-emerged as a geopolitical issue in the past decade due to the increased presence of China, India and Russia; the continent's importance in understanding global climate change; and its economic potential as a source of marine, genetic and mineral resources. This article examines the challenges for the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) in this context and the consequences for Australia's foreign policy in its dual role as both a territorial claimant and supporter of ATS norms of cooperative science and environmental protection. The central argument is that Antarctic ‘bifocalism’ is under pressure as increased commercial activity and problematic jurisdictional interfaces with other regimes create difficult regulatory challenges for the ATS and encourage assertions of sovereignty that cannot be resolved within the existing regime. Consequently, the author argues that it is vitally important for Australia to preserve the legitimacy of the ATS through a policy framework of ‘strategic denial’ that aims to prevent all states from acquiring sovereignty over Antarctic territory. Australia should therefore reject recent proposals to securitise Antarctic policy or pursue World Heritage listing because they involve assertions of sovereignty that risk fracturing the ATS and thus compromise Australia's enduring interest in keeping Antarctica as ‘a continent of international cooperation and peace’.     

Who goes there? Science, fiction, and belonging in Antarctica

The implications of the ATS regime on Antarctica have been profound, both structuring the possibilities for states to engage Antarctica, while limiting those very engagements to those directly related to science. State-run science has in many ways solved the problem of Antarctica's resistance to capital development and provided a safe course for national rivalry. Yet science has not always been seen as the sole convener of Antarctic activity. Tracing three versions of a story of resistance to an alien invasion of the pole – John Campbell's ‘Who Goes There?’ (1935), and its two filmic remakes, Christian Nyby's The Thing From Another World (1951) and John Carpenter's The Thing (1981), in relation to Richard E. Byrd's Antarctic exploration career, this essay considers US strategies for incorporating Antarctic territory into national and global imaginaries.     

Nuclear energy development in postwar West Germany: Struggles over cooperation in the Federal Republic's first reactor station

In the 1950s, a small group of political, scientific and business leaders in West Germany were determined to build a center for nuclear reactor research and development. They characterized the venture as a three-way partnership, intending to set an example for a scientific-technical age. The project was eventually carried out, but not without much conflict. The attempts at cooperation show parties with divergent sets of criteria that they only inadequately reconciled, and the struggles display their conflicted understandings of both the public-private boundary and the scientific role. New archival material lets us inspect more accurately the workings of the proposed collaboration. It shows how the conflicts developed in practice, despite all parties' expressions of commitment to cooperation.     

How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Grudgingly Accept Product Placement: Nicolás López,Chilewood and Criteria for A Neoliberal Cinema

This essay examines the films of Chilewood, a collaboration between Chilean director Nicolás López and U.S. director Eli Roth and which is based in Santiago, Chile. Chilewood’s films underscore a stylistic fragmentation in contemporary Chilean cinema, which largely rests on a distinction between genre cinema and auteur cinema. Within the Chilewood endeavour, Chile serves as a node of production for genre cinema (romantic comedies, comedies, disaster films, thrillers, horror) for both domestic audiences and international audiences. While Chilewood’s films provide an instance to examine different forms of transnationalism through production, financing and content, these same facets can be assessed for their neoliberal aspects that vary with each production.     

中日南极事业中的"蜜月合作"

《南极条约》包含了对中国等广大发展中国家不公平的条款。由于历史原因,我国没有能够参加利益关系重大的南极活动。80年代,因为国际政治气候的变化,中日两国接近,在南极考察方面进行了很好的协作。日本政府和社会对我国的南极事业给予了积极支持,中日度过了一段两国关系史上少有的“蜜月时期”。     

A simple theoretical model for computing omega navigation errors near Antarctica

The propagation of VLF signals around a model icecap has been computed using Kirchhoff diffraction theory. The Antarctic continent has been modelled as a spherical cap, whose pole is coincident with that of the South Pole, which totally absorbs VLF radio waves propagating over it. Using this simple model, the range errors expected, whilst travelling between Antarctica and New Zealand, on signals from Omega La Reunion and Argentina have been calculated and compared with recently derived measurements. It has been found that in order to model the measured range errors accurately it has been necessary to modify the simple spherical cap model to that of a semi-circular spherical cap, producing what is effectively knife edge diffraction. To ‘best fit’ the data, the northernmost limit of the spherical cap has been found to be 66.1°S for propagation from La Reunion and 75°S for propagation from Argentina. These model icecaps agree well with the northernmost boundary of the Antarctic continent where signals from Omega La Reunion and Argentina graze it tangentially.     

American Seeds of ABACC? Findley's Proposal to Create a Mutual Nuclear Inspections System Between Brazil and Argentina

ABSTRACT

After the first Indian peaceful nuclear explosion in 1974 international observers perceived Argentina and Brazil, long-time rivals in South America, as countries that could follow suit. Not only had they not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), they had also not joined the Tlatelolco Treaty: the Latin American and Caribbean nuclear-weapon-free zone. In this context, the US began to reassess and tighten its nonproliferation policy, particularly throughout the Jimmy Carter presidency (1977–1981). Carter's foreign policy sought to stall Argentine–Brazilian efforts to master the nuclear fuel cycle, as well as push them toward Tlatelolco. These efforts ultimately proved unsuccessful. However, after a visit to Argentina and Brazil, US congressman Paul Findley suggested in 1977 that they consider a bilateral agreement, whereby they would agree to mutual inspections and renounce the right to conduct peaceful nuclear explosions. Even though it was disregarded at the time, these are the core ideas behind the creation of the Brazilian–Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials (ABACC) established in 1991. This article, then, seeks to fill the gaps in what today constitutes an unknown episode in the dense nuclear nonproliferation history of the 1970s.     

Theatre sports in the Southern Ocean: engagement options for Australia in whale research protest action

In the great whaling debate, fuelled twice yearly by the annual International Whaling Commission meeting and the departure of the Japanese research fleet for the Southern Ocean, silliness knows no bounds. 2008 was no exception, as the Southern Ocean again became the location of protest action (sometimes provocative and potentially life-threatening) against Japanese scientific research vessels. The Japanese are accused of ‘whaling’ in a whale sanctuary off the Australian Antarctic Territory, yet this claim to sovereignty is not legally proven and therefore not universally accepted. The Rudd Labor Government bowed to significant pressure and sent its Customs vessel, the Oceanic Viking, to spy on the Japanese fleet and gather evidence for a possible ‘world court’ action. This paper examines what options were available to Australia to intervene in the protest action, to monitor the Japanese research and to take legal action in an international forum within the constraints of internationally defined diplomatic and legal boundaries. It concludes that the risk of attracting the wrath of the Japanese government and other Antarctic Treaty countries is great indeed and the Australian government must be careful not to step too far outside these boundaries.     

‘The first duties of persons living in a civilized community’: the Maya, the Church, and the colonial state in southern Belize

In recent years, historical geography has been at the forefront of new scholarship on the spatiality of colonial power and its complex relations with indigenous communities. This literature shows that imperial policies – emerging through state and scientific institutions, cultural practices, and capitalist ventures – required particular ways of conceptualizing, mapping, and organizing spaces and territories which transformed the geographies of indigenous communities, livelihoods, and identities. Through a close reading of archival texts from the late 19th and early 20th century, this paper examines the spatial and political relations between three groups: the Catholic Church, the British colonial state, and the Maya communities of southern British Honduras. Differences between the Catholic Church and the British colonial state – in their aims and approach to winning hegemony over the Q'eqchi' and Mopan Maya – were accommodated and assuaged by a tacit agreement: that the Maya must be settled in permanent communities. Colonial power, in both its spiritual and statist modalities, was imminently geographical, and this geography comprised the common ground between Church and state in their approach to the Maya.     

Political Obstacles to Decentralization: Evidence from Argentina and the Philippines

Decentralization has swept across the developing world in recent years. Although the speed and scope of the shift toward more decentralized practices is striking, decentralization is neither inevitable nor irreversible. Rather, it faces enormous political obstacles and can be subject to serious setbacks. This article accounts for attempts by national politicians to thwart decentralization in two countries that recently adopted some of the most significant decentralizing changes in their respective regions: Argentina and the Philippines. Based on fieldwork in each country, it suggests that even after the political decision to decentralize has been made, national politicians may face deep‐seated incentives to preserve centralized control over fiscal policy. In Argentina, President Carlos Menem partially reversed the previous decentralization of revenue because fiscally‐independent provincial governors were a challenge to his political interests and capabilities. In the Philippines, legislators attempted to reverse and then circumvent decentralization since it threatened their status as brokers claiming personal credit for negotiating fiscal transfers from the centre. The article identifies an intermediate outcome in both countries, according to which decentralizing policies are neither entirely reversed nor implemented as initially designed.