Antarctica’s settler colonial traditions: Alice E. Oates, ‘Settler colonial mindsets at Halley research station, 1955–present’, in Peder Roberts, Alejandra Mancilla (eds), Colonialism and Antarctica: Attitudes, logics and practices, Manchester University Press, 2024, pp. 248-270 | settler colonial studies blog

Antarctica’s settler colonial traditions: Alice E. Oates, ‘Settler colonial mindsets at Halley research station, 1955–present’, in Peder Roberts, Alejandra Mancilla (eds), Colonialism and Antarctica: Attitudes, logics and practices, Manchester University Press, 2024, pp. 248-270

06Aug24

Abstract: Colonialism is an area of growing interest for Antarctic scholars, but settler colonialism has so far received only minimal attention. This chapter utilises interviews with over-winterers from Halley research station, a British station on the Brunt Ice Shelf in West Antarctica, to argue that viewing British Antarctic activity within the broader context of settler colonialism can expand our understanding of the operation of Antarctic science and governance. Drawing on literature dealing with British colonial philosophies, settler colonial studies, and Antarctic humanities and social sciences, this chapter questions definitions of settler colonialism dependent on the dispossession of Indigenous people and focuses instead on appropriation of space as an explanatory factor in British settler colonialism in Antarctica. It identifies threads of a settler colonial mentality among Antarctic over-winterers, and in doing so contributes to scholarship that calls for a focus on the micro-history of settler colonialism, and seeks to situate Antarctica within the geopolitical context beyond 60o south.

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