The conceptual framework that guides the present study involves distinctions between three levels of activity that are mutually interlinked. These “levels”, already indicated in the previous section, may be characterized by three different key words: policy, institutions and individuals (see Fig. 10-1). At a micro-level, individual scientists are viewed as driven by personal and profes-sional interests. Ahlmann was a case in point. As a professor of geography at Stockholm högskola during the 1940s he was embedded in an institutional arrangement that allowed him to mobilize economic and infrastructural re-sources to achieve his aims. Large-scale rere-sources of the kind needed for an Antarctic expedition after World War II for the most part was one where patron-age had to involve economic backing and political authorization from above.
National subsidies were decided at the macro-level of politics and policies.
4 Jacobsson (2004) gives a critical analysis of the historical record, arguing that historically the lack of such a policy regarding Antarctic territory was not – as is often claimed – the result of a moral principle (altruism) but simply due to inaptitude.
Even though science policy did not formally emerge as a specific policy domain until later,5 one can nevertheless say that a country’s commitment to the IGY was prototypical of research done under the auspices of a country’s science policy.
Subsidies at the national level were mostly motivated with a mix of scientific institutional, economic and foreign policy as well as a matter of national pres-tige. Symbolic as well as material activities tend to merge as indicators of agency at the three levels of our analysis6.
Macro level: Politics and policy
Meso level: Institutional actors
Micro level: Individual scientists
Figure 10-1: Conceptual schematism showing three interacting levels of agency.
The institutional level may be understood as one where the interests of indivi-dual scientists and those of state policy meet. When positive resonance obtains between interests at the micro- and macro-levels the efforts of individual scien-tists are collectivized and organizationally facilitated (as well as constrained in various ways), and intentions get translated into plans and support out of the public purse. This allows individuals to develop networks and enrol others for their cause, other scientists as well as politicians and high-level civil servants.
Strong individual actors become champions who define strategic scientific orientations or re-orientations. Institutions are therefore the nodes where fund-ing and other resources needed for infrastructural and logistical support are brought together and canalized.
With the foregoing schematism in mind I also want to pinpoint some necessary and sufficient conditions needed for a country to launch Antarctic activities for
5 Cf. Elzinga & Jamison 1995: 584-587.
6 Elsewhere we use the concept of “institutional motives” (i.e., basic research, economic, military, legal, environmental protection motives, etc.) to address the question of how polar research can be a continuation of politics by other means (Elzinga and Bohlin 1989). For an important distinction between the practical-instrumental and symbolic-instrumental uses of science see Bohlin (1988), and also ∅streng (1989). Bohlin (1991) has an incisive discussion on the various combinations and tensions between “institutional motive”, see also Elzinga (1993).
the IGY. To do this I shall briefly contrast the Swedish and Belgian situations (Table 10-1). Sweden did not launch an Antarctic expedition whereas Belgium did. The comparison of the two cases can be used to highlight several factors at the three analytical levels of my conceptual frame. These coincided in the one case for the Antarctic (Belgium) but not in the other (Sweden). In the Swedish case individual scientific interests, institutional changes and national state poli-cies conjoined readily in a plan for an IGY venture in the Arctic, thereby exclu-ding the possibility of an Antarctic leg of the IGY.
Table 10-1: Factors with a bearing on IGY efforts in Sweden and Belgium.
IGY 1957/58 Adrien de Gerlache the driving spirit of the Belgica expedition 1898, took up the Antarctic cause. During World War II he became a hero in his own right as a fighter pilot with the British Royal Air Force. He was able to use symbolic capi-tal, as his father before, to mobilize a large number of sponsors, including the Belgian Royal family. He also collected money via private subscription cam-paigns. Two Norwegian vessels were rented7. The expedition left Antwerp 12 November 1957, arriving 26 December to set up King Baudouin base on King Leopold Bay. In all de Gerlache in the mid-50s raised the equivalent of one million U.S.dollars, enough for Belgium to go alone to Dronning Maud Land.
The presence of a strong nationalist heritage rhetoric paid off when mobilized by a highly visible champion for the Antarctic cause. This contrasted sharply with the Swedish situation where Otto Nordenskjöld’s name could never trigger the same kind of resonance and response in similar circles. Another difference was that in Belgium, as distinct from Sweden there was a clear political will,
7 See further Van Antenboer 2001.
perhaps influenced by the tradition of a colonial past closely linked to the fortunes of large mining companies and the Royal family.
The two cases are also interesting because they reveal something of the pre-conditions required in 1959 for a country to become a party to Antarctic affairs.
Poland applied to become a Treaty member but was told it would have to place a station in Antarctica. Belgium got in at a late hour with an expedition, setting up and running an over-wintering station.