Glaciological bodies: Australian visions of the Antarctic ice sheet
Building upon work in environmental history and the history of science that has critically investigated the relationships between humans and ice, this article approaches the history of the Antarctic ice sheet through the particular experiences, practices and ideas of Australian glaciologists between...
| Published in: | International Review of Environmental History |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | unknown |
| Published: |
ANU Press
2018
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/11343/218099 https://doi.org/10.22459/IREH.04.01.2018.09 |
| Summary: | Building upon work in environmental history and the history of science that has critically investigated the relationships between humans and ice, this article approaches the history of the Antarctic ice sheet through the particular experiences, practices and ideas of Australian glaciologists between the late 1940s and late 1980s. It seeks to understand the co-constitution of glaciological bodies—that is, the ways in which the work and search for standing and authority of individual scientists and scientific and political institutions (both scholarly and governmental) has also constituted our knowledge and sensibilities regarding the Antarctic ice sheet, the largest body of ice on Earth. This article reveals the origins of glaciology in Australia in both the heroic and nationalist stance of Douglas Mawson and others, as well as the German geographical and meteorological research traditions of Fritz Loewe. It continues by exploring the tensions between traditions of geographical research embodied by Loewe and cutting-edge developments in computational power and modelling the ice sheet emerging in the 1960s. It also demonstrates how Australian glaciologists had to navigate both the international demands of the discipline of glaciology alongside the demands of their paymasters in the Australian Government regarding territory and sovereignty in Antarctica. Thus, this article illuminates some of the multiple visions of the Antarctic ice sheet in the second half of the twentieth century, and the necessity of understanding its constitution in environmental and scientific thought by many actors. |
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