Scale as Social Construction

These simultaneous and multiple scales of identity exist within what Richard Howitt (2008: 151) has called the relational manner in which scales operate across space. "For a long time, it was assumed that scale was a question of either size or level (e.g., of complexity). What emerges from the recent literature is that scale is pre-eminently a matter of relation … the terrain of real landscapes in which spaces of engagement offer a myriad of transformational opportunities at a myriad of scales." Our spatial identities exist in complicated arrays, simultaneously connecting us to different scales at different times, causing us to express our particular identities according to the demands of particular situations. In short, how we perceive of scale is also a social construction (Staeheli 2008).

Geographers seek to understand how scales become constructed and transformed in response to social and spatial relationships (Marston 2000). They have examined identities and spatial interactions at scales ranging from the individual body, through households, neighbourhoods, cities, regions, nations, and on to emerging visions of supra-states. Each of these scales expands ever outward in spatial extent, but each is interwoven in a complex fabric of social, economic, and political relations.  

This concept of relational scale links to Massey's model of a network of scaled, interdependent political-cultural-ethical relationships. Massey (1994) employed her "satellite" imagery of global geographic flows on which to hang the further image of "stretching out" one's social relationships. Her purpose was to release geographers from conceptualizing places as static entities. Freed from conceptual constrictions about space, such as nested hierarchies, people in places gain the ability to "stretch" their relationships and identities in new directions. This is a more dynamic view of how people interact across scales. People have possibilities for expanded or contracted zones of interaction and influence, although these potentials are mediated by those very same political, economic, and social structures. Those place-specific structures will privilege some linkages and marginalize others.

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