Principles in Human Geography: Scale

Flashcards on key concepts and vocabulary from the Principles in Human Geography chapter on Scale.

Politics of Scale

The term coined by Neil Smith in the 1990s to examine the relationships between scale, power, and struggles in geographical analysis.

Scale Jumping

A process of strategic resistance, often used in social movements to counter local pressures, by mobilizing resources and arguments across different scales of space and governance.

Glocalisation

The simultaneous restructuring of scales, moving upwards to global and downwards to local, exemplified by brands like McDonald's, illustrating how global processes are always locally articulated.

Hierarchy of Scale

A traditional visualization of scale that suggests a vertical, often fixed, power relationship, where higher scales can oversee lower ones and appear dominant.

Matryoshka Dolls Metaphor

A metaphor used to describe scale, indicating that scales can be nested within one another, similar to Russian dolls, each contributing to a comprehensive whole and implying a fixed container-like structure.

Actor-Network Theory (ANT)

A sociological theory proposed by Bruno Latour, particularly influential from the 1980s onwards, that describes how human and non-human entities (actors) interact and form flexible networks, challenging traditional notions of causality and scale.

Human Geography without Scale

A concept proposed by Kevin Marston, Martin Jones, and Kristen Woodward in 2005, which critiques the utility of scale as an ontological category in human geography, advocating for a flatter, more site-based understanding of geographical phenomena.

Relational Thinking on Scale

An approach to understanding scale that emphasizes the dynamic connections and relationships between different entities and their processes across various spatial manifestations, rather than treating scales as pre-defined, isolated containers. This aligns with Doreen Massey's concepts of space as always-in-the-making and constituted by relations.

Erik Swyngedouw's 'Production of Scale'

A critical geographic concept asserted by Erik Swyngedouw, prominent from the 1990s, highlighting that scales are not natural or given but are actively produced, contested, and reconfigured through specific social, political, and economic processes, often tied to capitalist development.

Scalar Fixes

A concept, often discussed in relation to Neil Smith's work on scale, describing attempts by capital or states to resolve economic or political crises by geographically and spatially rescaling processes from one geographical scale to another.