Politics of Scale

The term scale refers to a spatial level of analysis, representation, reference, or articulation. Scale operates through the social, economic, and political processes of human geography as well as through the biological and ecological processes of physical geography. Though the conventional scalar classifications are often viewed as static, discrete, and hierarchical, many scholars within and outside the academy have noted the dynamic, interrelated, and [Page 329]constructed nature of standard scales of reference. Rather than being ontological givens, scales have come to be recognized as inherently political in nature. The term politics of scale gained purchase within the context of economic globalization and the resistances and strategies calling for socially just and ecologically sustainable alternatives. Recently, as neoliberal economic structures, states, supranational agencies, and numerous grassroots environmental movements around the world negotiate access to and protection of ecological resources, the politics of scale emerge as central to the most pressing environmental debates.

Despite its contested meanings and slippery modes of application, the political potency of scale is attested to by its ubiquity in popular spatial analysis. Within the present social, political, and economic landscapes, invocations of global and local, household and national pervade geographic articulations. For instance, critics of the dominant form of globalization have interrogated the global scale and its lack of accountability. Meanwhile, nongovernmental organizations strive to influence international policies so as to aid village and neighborhood communities. Agriculture, another key example, has undergone enormous transformations around the world over the past few generations, and scalar language has been used to promote, explain, justify, critique, and decry these shifts, as well as to imagine and advocate its alternatives. Though its operations remain abstract and subtle, scalar language has always and continues to configure and reconfigure power relations, and for this reason it demands continued analytical attention—particularly from those addressing environmental crises, policies, and opportunities.

Until recently, the term scale paralleled physical geography's notion of ratio of distance, attempting to map cartographic proportion onto social phenomena. This scalar configuration partook of government levels, stacking such familiar categories as “nation-state” atop “region” atop “local.” Economic geography reworked the scalar framework, trumping “nation-state” and even United Nations “supranational” with the uber-large-scale “global economy.” Power frames this scalar analysis, serving as the link between various levels and comprising a top-down chain of command.

Geographic scale, historically, has operated alongside its cartographic counterpart to measure the level or spatial magnitude of analysis, thus operating with regard to such trope-scales as region and nation-state. Accordingly, its existence was taken for granted as pregiven. Since the 1980s, however, geographical theorists have argued that scale is the ongoing product of construction, negotiation, and contestation. It did not precede its own conception, representation, and articulation, and as such, the question is not how scales affect social processes but how actors and activities make and employ scalar claims.

As a consequence, many argued that the process of scale-producing and the relationships between and among scales become their defining characteristics. Neil Smith introduced the metaphors of “scale-jumping” and “scale-bending,” whereas Eric Swyngedouw proposed the conflation of “globalization” to describe the key interstitial realm between fossilized scalar categories. Andrew Herod describes the global as the “multi-local,” rethinking each scale as an entry point into a scalar process. These and other theorists emphasized the constructed, as well as fluid and multidimensional attributes of scalar configuration, and worked to mitigate lingering ladder connotations and democratize scalar differentiations.

...