The Dictionary of Human Geography

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a result, it is important to ensure an appropri-

ate match between research questions and the

scale of analysis when developing a research

design (seeecological fallacy); (b) some

processes may operate at multiple scales at

once, and as a result, attention should be paid

to their operational distinctiveness at particular

scales and to the mechanisms that define their

modifications from one resolution to the next;

and (c) any scaled process can intersect with

other processes operating at any other scale,

often in complex ways that attenuate, amplify

or destabilize their operation. These sorts of

causal complications, in which processes are

conceived not only in their own terms but also

in terms of theirscales of operation, form one of

the more powerful arguments for the necessity

of incorporatingspaceinto social science. It is

also here that one finds common ground

between human geography andphysical

geography, for both deal with scalar shifts in

processes. In the study of coupled social and

naturalsystems, the complications of (a) to

(c) above may be operative.

A third aspect of scale is to recognize what

has been variously called its social production

orsocial construction(Smith, N., 1992b;

Delaney and Leitner, 1997; Marston, 2000).

In this view, spatial scales do not, as implied

above, rest as fixed platforms for social activity

and processes that connect up or down to

other hierarchical levels, but are insteadout-

comesof those activities and processes, to

which they in turn contribute through a

spatially uneven and temporally unfolding

dynamic (Swyngedouw, 1997). This recursive

relationship between social processes produ-

cing scales and scales affecting the operation

of social processes is one aspect of the socio-

spatialdialectic: the idea that social pro-

cesses and space – and hence scales – mutually

intersect, constitute, and rebound upon one

another in an inseparable chain of determin-

ations (seeproduction of space). Over the

past two decades, this view of scale has gener-

ated some of the most productive and novel

research in human geography (Cox, 1997;

Herod and Wright, 2002).

Given the importance of the dialectic to

historical materialism(and the larger cor-

pus ofmarxism) in general, and tomarxist

geographyin particular, it was capitalism

that was early on identified as the driver

behind the production of scale. From the for-

mation of working-class neighbourhoods

whose residents defend ‘turf’ through mis-

placed parochialisms, to the elite spaces of

cosmopolitan jet-setters who shirk their ethical

responsibilities while working to expand the

world economy, the inherentlyuneven devel-

opmentof capitalism has been viewed as the

fulcrum of the production of scale. This

emphasis led Marston (2000) to critique this

body of research for its privileging of produc-

tion and its relative neglect ofsocial repro-

duction. There nevertheless remain several

key advances in this literature, including:

(a) an acknowledgement of the inherently pol-

itical nature of scale production (Smith,

1996a); (b) the need to pay attention tostate

formations and various resistance move-

ments that both deploy and construct scales

(Miller, 2000; Brenner, 2004); and (c) the

need to re-theorize in more complex ways the

relationship between social processes and spa-

tial outcomes aspowercomes to be under-

stood as dispersed rather than centred. It is

in part through this last point that several

scale theorists over the past several years have

begun to turn away from purely hierarchical –

or, we might say, vertical – understandings of

scale to incorporate formulations that resem-

ble the horizontal relations of networks

(Amin, 2002b; Brenner, 2004).

The latest debate revolves around the claim

that scale itself, while no doubt an organizing

moment inepistemology, has merely a tran-

scendent statuswithinthe domain ofontol-

ogy(Marston, Jones and Woodward, 2005).

In the view of Marston and her colleagues,

scale is an epistemology that, though poten-

tially helpful in a methodological sense, is tied

Globe

Continent

Nation-state

Province/state

Metropolitan area/region

City/district

Neighbourhood/ward

Household/dwelling

Human body

scale A cascade of hierarchical levels

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SCALE