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Transactions / Künstlergasse 12

Elias Fly Earned 29 Crowns for a Kayak Trip: Self-Determination and Colonialism

Elias Fly Earned 29 Crowns for a Kayak Trip: Self-Determination and Colonialism

Lea Pfäffli

 

In the golden age of polar exploration, equipping expeditions became a business. The harsh environment in the Arctic called for specialized gear and logistics: Greenlanders offered huskies and protective clothing, fish oil and transport, intimacy and sex. In her doctoral thesis at the Chair for the History of Technology at ETH Zurich, Lea Pfäffli investigates the 1912–1913 Swiss Greenland expedition. Receipts from the archives shed light on the economic dimension of contacts between the Swiss and Greenlanders. In her work at the graduate school History of Knowledge of UZH and ETH Zurich, Lea Pfäffli is interested in whether these documents offer new insights into the colonized subjects’ room for maneuver. Will they allow a departure from what has hitherto been a Eurocentric writing of history? Or, if colonial contacts are recast as self-determined work relationships, is there a danger that marginalizing factors such as sex, race, and social status will be ignored?

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