Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
the forms of territorialization for capital are always
scaled
within historically specifi c,
multitiered territorial-organizational arrangements. The resultant scale-confi gurations,
or 'scalar fi xes,' simultaneously
circumscribe
the social relations of capitalism within
determinate, if intensely contested, geographical boundaries and
hierarchize
them
within relatively structured, if highly uneven and asymmetrical, patterns of sociospatial
interdependence (Brenner, 1998, p 464, emphases in original).
Terms such as 'scaling', 'rescaling', 'scale effects' and 'jumping scales' all draw
attention not only to the ongoing production of scale (and therefore its historical
contingency and malleability) but also to the non-linear, complex outcomes that are
hallmarks of scale-as-relation.
Research along these lines has more recently opened into vociferous debates
about the conceptual status of scale throughout human geography. In an oft-cited
article, Marston (2000) reviewed the literature and argued persuasively that geo-
graphical scale is socially constructed. Bodies, neighborhoods, cities and so forth
are not given
a priori
but produced through social processes; geographers have gone
astray, she argued, by taking their scales for granted and by privileging certain scales
- such as the nation-state or the global economy - over others such as the household.
Marston's article provoked a response by Brenner (2001), followed by several
further contributions (Marston and Smith, 2001; Purcell, 2003; Sayre, 2005).
Subsequently, Marston et al. (2005) changed course and expanded the controversy
by making a case 'to expurgate scale from the geographic vocabulary' altogether; a
fl urry of responses ensued, almost all of them critical of this position (e.g., Collinge,
2006; Jonas, 2006; Leitner and Miller, 2007). There is neither need nor space to
review these exchanges in detail here. Two points suffi ce to defuse much of the
controversy.
First, the debate has suffered from a confounding of scale's epistemological and
ontological moments. The critique of conventional geographical scales stemmed
initially from epistemological considerations: Taking the local, the national and the
global as
a priori
givens may obscure the interactions among various scales; a crude
hierarchy theory risks overlooking actors and processes at 'smaller' or 'lower' scales
by privileging 'larger' or 'bigger' ones. These are important points, but in choosing
a scale for observation one is not necessarily making any ontological commitments
or claims. Most of the substantive issues raised in the debate, however, concern the
ways that the operational scales of governance, reproduction, regulation and accu-
mulation have shifted in recent decades and how people contest and transform the
scales of actual processes in the world. This is not to say that the two moments are
separate or unrelated - on the contrary, their dialectical relation is of the utmost
importance. But confounding the two moments collapses the dialectic (Sayre,
2005).
Second, the acrimony and confusion refl ects a persistent failure to distinguish
between scale as size, level and relation. Almost all contributors employ scale both
in its second sense (where scale and level are interchangeable) and in its third sense
(where they are not) without recognising the problems this entails. Marston et al.
(2005, p. 420) argue that scale may 'be simply and effectively collapsed into' level;
they proceed to use the terms interchangeably or together, as in the phrase 'levels of
scale' (p. 422). But they do not even acknowledge the existence of scale as relation
(despite citing Howitt's papers on the subject), and collapsing scale into level
compels them to make hierarchy into an inherent attribute of scale. Since their real
animus is hierarchy, they indict scale
tout court.
It is true that Brenner, among
