Paper short abstract:

Antarctica has always been good to 'think with'. From the time that Aristotle first postulated the existence of a great 'Southern Land' onwards, the continent has been used to support all manner of theories and ideas regarding the state of the planet, and the course of its potential futures.

Paper long abstract:

Antarctica has always been good to 'think with'. From the time that Aristotle first postulated the existence of a great 'Southern Land' onwards, the continent has been used to support all manner of theories and ideas regarding the state of the planet, and the course of its potential futures. In recent years, Antarctica, come to be seen - both within the scientific community, and among the general public - as perhaps the key barometer of anthropogenic climate change, and of its likely effects. Conversely, the continent, and the scientific research that is done there, have also come to occupy a central position within some of the main arguments forwarded by 'climate change sceptics'.

This paper, which is part of a wider anthropological project on Antarctica's 'cultures of science', traces how and why the southern continent came to occupy such a central role within our understanding of anthropogenic climate change: how it came to be seen both as a primary laboratory for climate change research, and as a key battleground for climate change skepticism. It also looks at what effects this has had upon contemporary scientific activities in Antarctica. In particular, it looks at how the new context has led not only to new forms of inter-disciplinarity within Antarctica science, but also to an end to Antarctic 'exceptionalism' (whereby scientific practice on the continent was long regarded as essentially different to all forms of science done elsewhere). Finally, it has also stimulated a new interest among Antarctic scientists in exposing their activities to scrutiny by social scientist, including anthropologists.