Globalizing Polar Science


Book Description

The International Polar Years and the International Geophysical Year represented a remarkable international collaborative scientific effort that has been largely neglected by historians. This groundbreaking collection seeks to redress that neglect and illuminate critical aspects of the last 150 years of international scientific endeavour.




Globalizing Polar Science


Book Description

The International Polar Years and the International Geophysical Year represented a remarkable international collaborative scientific effort that has been largely neglected by historians. This groundbreaking collection seeks to redress that neglect and illuminate critical aspects of the last 150 years of international scientific endeavour.




Science, Geopolitics and Culture in the Polar Region


Book Description

Throughout the twentieth century, glaciologists and geophysicists from Denmark, Norway and Sweden made important scientific contributions across the Arctic and Antarctic. This research was of acute security and policy interest during the Cold War, as knowledge of the polar regions assumed military importance. But scientists also helped make the polar regions Nordic spaces in a cultural and political sense, with scientists from Norden punching far above their weight in terms of population, geographical size or economic activity. This volume presents an image of Norden that stretches far beyond its conventional limits, covering a vast area in the North Atlantic and the Arctic Sea, as well as parts of Antarctica. Rich in resources, scarce in population, but critically important in global and regional geopolitics, these spaces were contested by major powers such as Russia, the United States, Canada and, in the Antarctic, Argentina, Australia, South Africa and others. The empirical focus on Danish, Norwegian and Swedish influence in the polar regions during the twentieth century embraces a diverse array of themes, from the role of science in policy and diplomacy to the tensions between nationalism and internationalism, with clear relevance to the important role science plays in contemporary discussions about Nordic engagement with the polar regions.




Science and Technology in the Global Cold War


Book Description

Investigations of how the global Cold War shaped national scientific and technological practices in fields from biomedicine to rocket science. The Cold War period saw a dramatic expansion of state-funded science and technology research. Government and military patronage shaped Cold War technoscientific practices, imposing methods that were project oriented, team based, and subject to national-security restrictions. These changes affected not just the arms race and the space race but also research in agriculture, biomedicine, computer science, ecology, meteorology, and other fields. This volume examines science and technology in the context of the Cold War, considering whether the new institutions and institutional arrangements that emerged globally constrained technoscientific inquiry or offered greater opportunities for it. The contributors find that whatever the particular science, and whatever the political system in which that science was operating, the knowledge that was produced bore some relation to the goals of the nation-state. These goals varied from nation to nation; weapons research was emphasized in the United States and the Soviet Union, for example, but in France and China scientific independence and self-reliance dominated. The contributors also consider to what extent the changes to science and technology practices in this era were produced by the specific politics, anxieties, and aspirations of the Cold War. Contributors Elena Aronova, Erik M. Conway, Angela N. H. Creager, David Kaiser, John Krige, Naomi Oreskes, George Reisch, Sigrid Schmalzer, Sonja D. Schmid, Matthew Shindell, Asif A. Siddiqi, Zuoyue Wang, Benjamin Wilson




Science, Geopolitics and Culture in the Polar Region


Book Description

Throughout the twentieth century, glaciologists and geophysicists from Denmark, Norway and Sweden made important scientific contributions across the Arctic and Antarctic. This research was of acute security and policy interest during the Cold War, as knowledge of the polar regions assumed military importance. But scientists also helped make the polar regions Nordic spaces in a cultural and political sense, with scientists from Norden punching far above their weight in terms of population, geographical size or economic activity. This volume presents an image of Norden that stretches far beyond its conventional limits, covering a vast area in the North Atlantic and the Arctic Sea, as well as parts of Antarctica. Rich in resources, scarce in population, but critically important in global and regional geopolitics, these spaces were contested by major powers such as Russia, the United States, Canada and, in the Antarctic, Argentina, Australia, South Africa and others. The empirical focus on Danish, Norwegian and Swedish influence in the polar regions during the twentieth century embraces a diverse array of themes, from the role of science in policy and diplomacy to the tensions between nationalism and internationalism, with clear relevance to the important role science plays in contemporary discussions about Nordic engagement with the polar regions.




The GlobalArctic Handbook


Book Description

This book offers a systematic and comprehensive introduction to the Arctic in the era of globalization, or as it is referred to here, the ‘GlobalArctic’. It provides an overview of the current status of the Arctic as a result of global change, while also considering the changes in the Arctic that have a global effect. It positions the Arctic within a broad international context, it addresses four main themes are discussed: economics and resources; environment and earth system dynamics; peoples and cultures; and geopolitics and governance. Gathering together expert authors and building on long-term research activities, it serves as a valuable reference for future research endeavors.




Handbook of Research on International Collaboration, Economic Development, and Sustainability in the Arctic


Book Description

Global interest in the exploration of the Arctic has been growing rapidly. As the Arctic becomes a global resource base and trade corridor between the continents, it is crucial to identify the dangers that such a boom of extractive industries and transport routes may bring on the people and the environment. The Handbook of Research on International Collaboration, Economic Development, and Sustainability in the Arctic discusses the perspectives and major challenges of the investment collaboration and development and commercial use of trade routes in the Arctic. Featuring research on topics such as agricultural production, environmental resources, and investment collaboration, this book is ideally designed for policymakers, business leaders, and environmental researchers seeking coverage on new practices and solutions in the sphere of achieving sustainability in economic exploration of the Artic region.




Eismitte in the Scientific Imagination


Book Description

Since the 18th century, Greenland's geometric center, Eismitte, has been one of the most forbidding but scientifically rich locations in the Arctic. Tracing its history from European contact through the Cold War, this study shows how Eismitte was the setting for scientific knowledge production as well as diplomatic maneuvering.




Legacies and Change in Polar Sciences


Book Description

Providing case study analyses of the politics of science in and around the International Polar Year of 2007-2008, this volume makes a distinct contribution to ongoing research focusing on the relationship between science, international politics, law and history. The contributors combine both interdisciplinary and multi-theoretical approaches to engage directly with the most recent debates in international relations scholarship, to include discussions of arctic climate change, governance issues, reflections on the Antarctic Treaty and the science-geopolitics interface amongst others. This is the first comprehensive account to look explicitly at the relationship between global politics and science through an account of the International Polar Years.




Explorations in the Icy North


Book Description

Science in the Arctic changed dramatically over the course of the nineteenth century, when early, scattered attempts in the region to gather knowledge about all aspects of the natural world transitioned to a more unified Arctic science under the First International Polar Year in 1882. The IPY brought together researchers from multiple countries with the aim of undertaking systematic and coordinated experiments and observations in the Arctic and Antarctic. Harsh conditions, intense isolation, and acute danger inevitably impacted the making and communicating of scientific knowledge. At the same time, changes in ideas about what it meant to be an authoritative observer of natural phenomena were linked to tensions in imperial ambitions, national identities, and international collaborations of the IPY. Through a focused study of travel narratives in the British, Danish, Canadian, and American contexts, Nanna Katrine Lüders Kaalund uncovers not only the transnational nature of Arctic exploration, but also how the publication and reception of literature about it shaped an extreme environment, its explorers, and their scientific practices. She reveals how, far beyond the metropole—in the vast area we understand today as the North American and Greenlandic Arctic—explorations and the narratives that followed ultimately influenced the production of field science in the nineteenth century.