Inside and Outside Capitalism: The Life of Sealers on the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica

MELISA A. SALERNO; MARÍA JIMENA CRUZ; ANDRÉS ZARANKIN

The Historical Archaeology of Shadow and Intimate Economies

University Press of Florida

Lugar: Gainesville; Año: 2019; p. 158 - 177

Historical archaeologists have studied capitalism as a global process intimately associated with the forces of modernity and colonialism from a variety of perspectives (Johnson 1996, 1999; Leone 1988, 1995; Orser 1996, 2000). Most researchers agree that the formal aspects of capitalism are frequently associated with practices and relationships that encourage the experience of certain degrees of distance, rupture, and exteriority with nature, things, and people, opening the way to objectification, commodification, and individualism. The interventions of capitalist businessmen and the sociospatial segmentation of practices of gathering, manufacturing, exchanging, and consuming sometimes lead to mediated and impersonal relationships, whereby commodities have no value beyond an economic one. Furthermore, differential access to commodities often emphasizes social distinction and hierarchies.Since 1995, we have collaborated on a research project in historical archaeology focused on the expansion of capitalism over Antarctica (Zarankin and Salerno 2015; Zarankin and Senatore 1999a, 1999b, 2005, 2007; Zarankin et al. 2011). According to official history, in 1819, sealers were the first to arrive to the South Shetland Islands, the closest Antarctic archipelago to the coasts of South America (Fitte 1962; Miers 1920; Stackpole 1955). They operated in the region in different moments of the nineteenth century, mainly looking for seal skins and elephant seal oil (Berguño 1993a, 1993b). In this chapter we explore how sealers managed to get the food and clothes they considered necessary for survival. We will focus on two different but interrelated contexts that were part of the sealing voyages bound to the South Shetlands: life on board the vessels (through analysis of documentary sources) and life on the Antarctic hunting grounds (through analysis of archaeological evidence).