Toward Antarctification? Tourism and place-making in Antarctica

ABSTRACT

Antarctic tourism has been growing increasingly and diversifying over the past two decades. In parallel, Antarctic tourism scholarship has particularly focused on tourism development and management. This industry- and policy-focused research has neglected to address how these developments affect place-making processes in Antarctica. This article is grounded in conceptual developments of ‘Arctification’, a phenomenon that appears to have significant impacts on the making of the Arctic as a place (to visit) using specific narratives in tourism. Thus, this study expands these conceptual developments to Antarctic tourism by investigating tourism’s role in place-making in Antarctica through ‘Antarctification’. Four types of narratives emerge from tourism promotion materials constituting the core of Antarctification: Antarctica as a place (1) of exploration, (2) that is wild and empty, (3) of superlatives, and (4) needing environmental stewardship and ambassadorship. The use of these narratives locks Antarctica into particular imaginaries designed to attract visitors. Identifying these dominant narratives is critical, as they may markedly impact conservation agendas, Antarctic wildlife encounters, icescapes, and heritage.

KEYWORDS:

• Antarctification
• Antarctic tourism
• narratives
• place-making
• politics
• sustainability

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments, as well as to our colleagues for insightful suggestions and discussions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Academy of Finland [ArcI (Arctic Interactions), grant number 318930; ANTS (Biodiverse Anthropocenes), grant number 336449]; the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek [ANTARC-SHIP, grant number 2023/NWA/01574243; ProAct, grant number AWLPP.2019.007]; and the Wageningen Institute for Environment and Climate Research [WIMEK visiting scholar travel grant].