Marston The social construction of scale

The author offers a review on the developments on the theorization of the concept of scale in geography as well as proposes a line to advance in such productions, particularly by incorporating consumption and reproduction (as suggested by Lefebvre) to the analysis. Scale is a central concept in all geography subdisciplines and varies form issues of size, level and relation. Arelational analysis of scale may contribute to problematize this three dimensions in their interconnections. If the contemporary debates around scale offer a constructivist approach, which recognizes scale as a social product and not an ontological fact, scale is not only a product but constitutive of geographical relations. To address the production of scale she points to the need of understanding both the dynamics of capitalist production which is always producijng and reproducing scale, but also to understand the state as one of the factors effecting globalization and being in turn affected by them. for this she takes Brenner reading on the state as a scial organization of space that makes the “enables the extension of power and control enabling the circulation of capital.” (227) Globalization is a fundamental force constructing different scales. The case studies she review show how scale is generated form power positions, that both distinguishes levels and create specific articulations of scale, as well as how social movements use the opening made at different scales. Thus subjectivity and agency need to be considered as forces producing scale, the differential production of subjectivity, made through particular positionings is transvered by the axis of scale. The body as well as the home, nature and global capital production of value are forces affected by and affecting the production of scale. “The urban is perhaps the most intense site of political struggle because this is where the process of the capital competition and cooperation play themselves out” (232) having immediate and different affections over social groups. In this there is the possibility of a study of the struggles of articulating locations as a politics of scale. Networks analysis may offer insight in how some localities have more possibilities than other to associate with others that are not close to their immediate boundaries, and how they do so by associating simultaneously at different scales. She reviews the work of Neil Smith as offering a theory of scale, at a political economic level. He is takes Taylor´s distinctions to point to a global scale of a world economy organized around the capitalist relations that are directed towards an equalization of relations, a urban scale one of experience that tends towards a differentiation not only of relation but also by the way international labor market is divided. Finally the scale of the nation mediates between them. The state scale remains important with globalization as states remains central for protecting the interests of national capitals competing against others, and as a power that controls localized labor force. Thus the level of the reproduction of life and the gendered dimension of it is a central, overlooked dimension. Capiralism cannot be understood as a simultaneous constitution of a gender, ethnicity, race and class, all play out in the making of the public private domenain. She takes for example the making of a scientific managerism of the house as the housewife responsibility, something that made them into responsible citizens and thus linking the house with the broader community. This can be also connected to the suffragists movements that turned women into public political actors. Thus the home was a complex geographical structure in which production and reproduction were converging enabling shaping economic and political forces.