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Rethinking Tasmania’s regionality from an Antarctic perspective: flipping the map
journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-20, 04:33 authored by Hanne NielsenHanne Nielsen, Chloe LucasChloe Lucas, Elizabeth LeaneElizabeth LeaneTasmania hangs from the map of Australia like a drop in freefall from the substance of the mainland. Often the whole state is mislaid from Australian maps and logos (Reddit). Tasmania has, at least since federation, been considered peripheral—a region seen as isolated, a ‘problem’ economically, politically, and culturally. However, Tasmania not only cleaves to the ‘north island’ of Australia but is also subject to the gravitational pull of an even greater land mass—Antarctica. In this article, we upturn the political conventions of map-making that place both Antarctica and Tasmania in obscure positions at the base of the globe. We show how a changing global climate re-frames Antarctica and the Southern Ocean as key drivers of worldwide environmental shifts. The liquid and solid water between Tasmania and Antarctica is revealed not as a homogenous barrier, but as a dynamic and relational medium linking the Tasmanian archipelago with Antarctica. When Antarctica becomes the focus, the script is flipped: Tasmania is no longer on the edge, but core to a network of gateways into the southern land. The state’s capital of Hobart can from this perspective be understood as an “Antarctic city”, central to the geopolitics, economy, and culture of the frozen continent (Salazar et al.). Viewed from the south, we argue, Tasmania is not a problem, but an opportunity for a form of ecological, cultural, economic, and political sustainability that opens up the southern continent to science, discovery, and imagination.
Funding
Australian Research Council
Christchurch City Council
Hobart City Council
University of Canterbury
History
Publication title
M/C JournalVolume
22Article number
1528Number
1528Pagination
1-7ISSN
1441-2616Department/School
School of HumanitiesPublisher
Queensland University of TechnologyPlace of publication
AustraliaRights statement
Copyright 2019 Hanna E.F. Nielsen. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Repository Status
- Open