Grounding Territory: Geoscience and the Territorial Ordering of Greenland During the Early Cold War
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Durham E-Theses Grounding Territory: Geoscience and the Territorial Ordering of Greenland During the Early Cold War BRUUN, JOHANNE,MARGRETHE How to cite: BRUUN, JOHANNE,MARGRETHE (2018) Grounding Territory: Geoscience and the Territorial Ordering of Greenland During the Early Cold War, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/12491/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 Grounding Territory Geoscience and the Territorial Ordering of Greenland During the Early Cold War Johanne Margrethe Bruun Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Geography, Durham University 2018 Abstract Following recent calls for a more ‘earthly’ geopolitics, this thesis contributes to the ongoing momentum within Political Geography to add depth, volume, and matter to the concept of territory. Merging insights from Science and Technology Studies with geographical studies of territory, this thesis asks how the sciences of the Earth may serve as technologies of territory. How, in other words, might states use science to forge a seemingly stable ordering of space which is extendable through time from a world defined by chaos, instability, and incessant change? To address this question, the thesis mobilises two instances of territory construction in Greenland during the early Cold War, when two differently motivated intruding powers, Denmark and the USA, both used Earth Science as a means of territorialising Greenlandic geographies. Firstly, the high-profile case of Danish uranium prospecting at Ilímaussaq exemplifies Danish attempts at casting Greenland as a space of extraction – as land upon which the nation might capitalise. Secondly, the practices of two interrelated US military scientific expeditionary outfits are used to show how the US sought to cast Greenlandic landscapes as a military terrain serving as an extra-sovereign extension of American state space. Despite the apparent differences between these two cases, the empirical findings of this thesis complicate simplistic distinctions between land and terrain, the voluminous and the horizontal, and also between bio- and geo-political orderings of state space. Reading across these two instances of territory formation, the thesis draws attention to the temporal and processual characteristics of territory by showing how territory’s formation in Greenland was informed by a complicated interplay between stability and flow rather than a rigid ‘logic of solids’. Building on Stuart Elden’s work on territory and Elizabeth Grosz’s philosophies of Earth, this thesis thus argues that territory is, in part, a geo-political technology which allows the state to attune to the rhythmic forcefulness of Earth and draw on and over its latent power. iii Table of Contents List of Illustrations ................................................................................................................... ix List of Tables ........................................................................................................................... xi List of Abbreviations .............................................................................................................. xiii Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................. xvii Chapter 1. Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1 Territory in glass cabinets ...................................................................................................................... 1 Territory with its qualities .................................................................................................................... 2 The ‘geo’ of geopolitics ..................................................................................................................... 4 Territories of scientific knowledge ................................................................................................ 6 Territory-as-land/territory-as-terrain ......................................................................................... 8 Empirical context: Greenland in the early Cold War period .................................................. 10 The political status of Greenland ................................................................................................. 11 Cold War Earth Science ................................................................................................................. 13 US research programmes in Greenland ..................................................................................... 14 Danish geological research ............................................................................................................. 17 Research aims and empirical case histories .................................................................................... 18 Chapter 2. State, Space, Territory .................................................................................................. 23 Territory as state space ......................................................................................................................... 24 Sovereignty, jurisdiction, and the sanctity of borders ................................................................ 26 Bounded spaces in a borderless world ............................................................................................. 28 Theorising territory: critique of reductionist conceptions ........................................................ 32 Territory beyond ‘the border’: revival of a neglected concept ................................................ 34 Territory’s production: lessons from critical cartography ......................................................... 37 Territorialisation of state power ................................................................................................... 37 v Calculation, territorial violence, and the rationalisation of spatial governance ............ 40 Territory as a political technology .................................................................................................... 43 Land ....................................................................................................................................................... 44 Terrain .................................................................................................................................................. 45 Concluding remarks .............................................................................................................................. 47 Chapter 3. The Metrics of Territory ............................................................................................. 51 The politics of calculation: territory and governmentality ....................................................... 52 Science, power, and spatialised governance: the world made flat .......................................... 56 Scientific translation and inscription ........................................................................................... 57 (Im)mutable mobiles ........................................................................................................................ 60 Centralised governance at a distance .......................................................................................... 62 Geopolitics and the political geo ....................................................................................................... 63 Depth and matter of territory ....................................................................................................... 64 Geo-metrics, Earth Science, and the political geo ...................................................................... 66 Capitalising on the political geo: drawing power from the Earth ......................................... 69 Concluding remarks .............................................................................................................................. 72 Chapter 4. Methodological Reflections ........................................................................................ 75 ‘The archive’ as a political technology ............................................................................................ 76 Tracing fragments: navigating the archival maze ........................................................................ 79 My archive of archives .................................................................................................................... 83 The geological archive .......................................................................................................................... 86 Archival encounters .............................................................................................................................