Arctic network builders : the Arctic Coal Company's operations on Spitsbergen and its relationship with the environment


Autoria(s): Hartnell, Cameron C.
Data(s)

01/01/2009

Resumo

In 1906, two American industrialists, John Munroe Longyear and Frederick Ayer, formed the Arctic Coal Company to make the first large scale attempt at mining in the high-Arctic location of Spitsbergen, north of the Norwegian mainland. In doing so, they encountered numerous obstacles and built an organization that attempted to overcome them. The Americans sold out in 1916 but others followed, eventually culminating in the transformation of a largely underdeveloped landscape into a mining region. This work uses John Law’s network approach of the Actor Network Theory (ANT) framework to explain how the Arctic Coal Company built a mining network in this environmentally difficult region and why they made the choices they did. It does so by identifying and analyzing the problems the company encountered and the strategies they used to overcome them by focusing on three major components of the operations; the company’s four land claims, its technical system and its main settlement, Longyear City. Extensive comparison between aspects of Longyear City and the company’s choices of technology with other American examples place analysis of the company in a wider context and helps isolate unique aspects of mining in the high-Arctic. American examples dominate comparative sections because Americans dominated the ownership and upper management of the company.

Formato

application/pdf

Identificador

http://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/etds/289

http://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1288&context=etds

Publicador

Digital Commons @ Michigan Tech

Fonte

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Palavras-Chave #Anthropology #Archaeological Anthropology #Social and Behavioral Sciences
Tipo

text