Club Antarctica? Why a community approach matters for public engagement in gateway cities

Abstract

With Antarctica facing many urgent environmental challenges, it is becoming increasingly important to ensure that members of the public are supported to understand, care about and protect the southern polar region. Research to date has taken a variety of approaches to Antarctic public engagement, framing it as a challenge for science communication, the media, education and/or the arts. In this paper, we take a social approach by examining public engagement with Antarctica’s communities, applying theories of place attachment, social capital and structuration. Using the Antarctic gateway city of Hobart as a case example, we ask what Antarctic communities are present in the city, how they are perceived by residents and what factors influence local public engagement with Antarctica. Through in-depth interviews, we identify three separate but overlapping Antarctic communities present in Hobart: the expeditioner community, the gateway community and the diplomatic community. We find that four key factors influence participation in these communities: not only communication, but also built environment and infrastructure, availability of shared activities and the existence of an ‘experience hierarchy’ that prioritizes the perspectives of people who have travelled to Antarctica in person. These results suggest that if we want to move society towards engaging to protect Antarctica, the current engagement focus on science communication may not be sufficient; rather, we should prioritize community-building strategies to strengthen ties between Antarctic communities and the broader public.