Science and Culture in the Kerguelen Islands: A Relational Approach to the Spatial Formation of a Subantarctic Archipelago
The Kerguelen Islands are devoid of a permanent population, but are nonetheless interlinked to past and current human activities that have shaped their subantarctic landscape. In the past decades, the archipelago has become a French outpost for scientific research where scientists, support staff, re...
| Published in: | Island Studies Journal |
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| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
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Island Studies Journal
2018
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| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.24043/isj.63 https://doaj.org/article/1e7ebabd314e493fa6510d8961eee3c2 |
| Summary: | The Kerguelen Islands are devoid of a permanent population, but are nonetheless interlinked to past and current human activities that have shaped their subantarctic landscape. In the past decades, the archipelago has become a French outpost for scientific research where scientists, support staff, research assistants, and travelers assemble during temporary missions. In this article, I present the spatial formation of islands as relational in order to explore how the material and the cultural converge to make the Kerguelen Islands a place of both mundane practice and global interconnection. These spatialities intertwine the features of the landscape with pre-departure preparations, animal encounters, scientific rigour, daily routines, and past human activities. I advance these narratives by analyzing 18 blogs of French sojourners who have spent extensive time on the Kerguelen Islands. I ultimately give islands without a permanent population a character unlike that of isolation and contemplation as is usually attributed to cold-water islands of the (sub) polar seas. |
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