Abstract
The recent March for Science has stimulated many discussions about whether science has a political agenda and what public role scientists should be playing, if any. The Technocratic Antarctic is timely and informative about these precise conversations, among others. For some readers, however, the book’s biggest surprise will be learning that popular perceptions of Antarctica are frequently misplaced. Not just an empty continent for science, peace, and environmental protection, Antarctica is instead a place with people and culture. It has field scientists and helicopter pilots, cooks and physicians, not to mention the bureaucrats overseeing research permits and monitoring compliance with rules and regulations. Antarctica is also a place with landing strips and paved roads, with large and active research bases that host thousands of people every summer. It has noise pollution from helicopters. People have tossed garbage into glacier crevasses. Oil spills and fuel leaks have contaminated ice and water. Antarctica has rules and regulations as well as an active technocratic community that makes policy, conducts international diplomacy, and shapes the environment.
Antarctica is made and produced, The Technocratic Antarctic explains, not only through science but also through the technocrats who implement and oversee policies. They frame its value for global environmental research, shape its management, and influence policies within and beyond Antarctica. Researchers do this particularly through what O’Reilly calls charismatic research and charismatic data. When Antarctic scientists present their research in public lectures or through the media, they choose to convey certain scientific results (often about climate change) and compelling apocalyptic stories (such as the Larsen B ice shelf collapse), which they share through visually arresting photographs or figures. Charismatic data are mobilized to yield certain responses among the public and policymakers – the charismatic data thus ‘do political work’ (p. 157). Calling it charismatic data is not about challenging the scientific method or questioning the quality of data analysis. Rather, it is about the representation of Antarctic science for the public and the ways in which scientists produce figures and mobilize data for general audiences and policymakers, often with the hope of stimulating certain responses – from triggering new specialized research and attracting funding to inspiring certain management regulations in Antarctica, or yielding policies on global climate change.
But not everyone has an equal role in the making of Antarctic science and policy. One New Zealand researcher complained that while she was rolling stones back into place after camping for a night (to protect fragile soils, rocks, and plant communities, as dictated by the Madrid Protocol), she learned that the US operation was building a permanent weir. She reflected that ‘Antarctica New Zealand isn’t going to get very far with expecting people to roll stones about if the Americans are going to come in and put down concrete and set up these structures’ (p. 54). Researchers from different countries obviously do not have the same experiences, resources, or capacity to conduct their studies. In another case, a researcher attending an important workshop on ‘creating international Antarctic biosecurity policy’ (p. 104) – a meeting, by the way, sponsored by the producers of the penguin cartoon film Happy Feet – was described by O’Reilly as ‘outspoken, frank, and good-naturedly gruff’ (p. 108). His research insights, and his broader reflections on international Antarctic politics and the Antarctic Treaty System, ended up as key components of the resulting workshop text – showing both the influence of science on policies and the way interpersonal dynamics and individual behavior influence technocracy.
In another example, the Republic of India announced at the opening of the 2006 Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting that it was planning to build a new research base in the Larsemann Hills. The announcement came as a shock to most, and many delegates berated India for not following informal procedures, which involved consulting with other nations and building consensus prior to making the plan public. But India had not consulted in part to circumvent the historical power exerted by the long-term Antarctic countries. As O’Reilly explains, consulting ‘the most well-established, wealthy, and powerful national Antarctic programs’ would have subjected them to neocolonialist pressure. India thus (successfully in this case) refused ‘to participate in the process that opens up opportunities to be bullied and pressured’ (p. 124).
These three examples begin to illustrate how power and inequality operate in Antarctic science and policy – at the individual, national, and international levels. These important insights from The Technocratic Antarctic on the present and recent past augment a large body of historical scholarship uncovering the colonial, Cold War, and geopolitical aspects of Antarctic science and governance by authors such as Adrian Howkins, Klaus Dodds, Peder Roberts, Alan Hemmings, Alessandro Antonello, and many others. Like them, O’Reilly shows how science in Antarctica is in fact linked strongly with policy and technocracy, whether acknowledged in the 2017 March for Science or not. Through her ethnographic focus on Antarctic scientists and policymakers, O’Reilly thus helps explain how science works not only in Antarctica but with broader implications for science-policy interfaces internationally.