Comments on: “Scale Making” In My Ear http://savageminds.org/2008/04/07/scale-making-in-my-ear/ Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog Fri, 25 May 2012 16:53:46 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: Kerim http://savageminds.org/2008/04/07/scale-making-in-my-ear/comment-page-1/#comment-278466 Kerim Tue, 08 Apr 2008 03:57:32 +0000 http://savageminds.org/2008/04/07/scale-making-in-my-ear/#comment-278466 And <a href="http://geography.uoregon.edu/murphy/geog607/SYL%2007.htm" rel="nofollow">here is a graduate course syllabus</a> on the topic. Seems like a fairly comprehensive and current overview of the topic. This is a <a href="http://www.es.mq.edu.au/~rhowitt/POLGEO.htm" rel="nofollow">useful discussion</a> as well. And here is a graduate course syllabus on the topic. Seems like a fairly comprehensive and current overview of the topic.

This is a useful discussion as well.

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]]> By: Kerim http://savageminds.org/2008/04/07/scale-making-in-my-ear/comment-page-1/#comment-278415 Kerim Tue, 08 Apr 2008 03:22:50 +0000 http://savageminds.org/2008/04/07/scale-making-in-my-ear/#comment-278415 Thanks! Its good to know the proper keywords <a href="http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=“politics+of+scale”" rel="nofollow">to use when searching</a>. Thanks! Its good to know the proper keywords to use when searching.

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]]> By: Jan Nespor http://savageminds.org/2008/04/07/scale-making-in-my-ear/comment-page-1/#comment-278318 Jan Nespor Tue, 08 Apr 2008 02:04:10 +0000 http://savageminds.org/2008/04/07/scale-making-in-my-ear/#comment-278318 There’s quite a literature (As Adam says above, this is usually known as the “politics of scale” literature). In addition to some of the people who’ve been mentioned: Cox, K. R. (1998). Spaces of dependence, spaces of engagement and the politics of scale, or: looking for local politics. Political Geography 17 (1), 1-23. (and some responses in the same issue) Swyngedouw, E. (2000). Authoritarian governance, power, and the politics of rescaling. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 18, 63-76. Swyngedouw, E. and Heynen, N. (2003). Urban political ecology, justice and the politics of scale. Antipode, 898-918. Harrison, J. (2006). “‘Accidents’ and invisibilities: Scaled discourse and the naturalization of regulatory neglect in California’s pesticide drift conflict” Political Geography, 506-529. May still be available at: http://www.drs.wisc.edu/harrison/_docs/Harrison2006PoliticalGeography.pdf An interesting and entertaining use of Neil Smith’s categories of scale is the organizing structure of David Bell and Gill Valentine. (1997). Consuming Geographies: We Are Where We Eat (Routledge) My own modest contribution to the area is: Nespor, J. (2003). Educational Scale-making. Pedagogy, Culture, and Society, 12(3) Doreen Massey questions the whole notion, arguing instead that we think in terms of "constellations of temporary coherence" or something like that (quoting from memory). There’s quite a literature (As Adam says above, this is usually known as the “politics of scale” literature). In addition to some of the people who’ve been mentioned:

Cox, K. R. (1998). Spaces of dependence, spaces of engagement and the politics of scale, or: looking for local politics. Political Geography 17 (1), 1-23. (and some responses in the same issue)

Swyngedouw, E. (2000). Authoritarian governance, power, and the politics of rescaling. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 18, 63-76.
Swyngedouw, E. and Heynen, N. (2003). Urban political ecology, justice and the politics of scale. Antipode, 898-918.

Harrison, J. (2006). “‘Accidents’ and invisibilities: Scaled discourse and the naturalization of regulatory neglect in California’s pesticide drift conflict” Political Geography, 506-529. May still be available at: http://www.drs.wisc.edu/harrison/_docs/Harrison2006PoliticalGeography.pdf

An interesting and entertaining use of Neil Smith’s categories of scale is the organizing structure of
David Bell and Gill Valentine. (1997). Consuming Geographies: We Are Where We Eat (Routledge)

My own modest contribution to the area is:
Nespor, J. (2003). Educational Scale-making. Pedagogy, Culture, and Society, 12(3)

Doreen Massey questions the whole notion, arguing instead that we think in terms of “constellations of temporary coherence” or something like that (quoting from memory).

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]]> By: John McCreery http://savageminds.org/2008/04/07/scale-making-in-my-ear/comment-page-1/#comment-278276 John McCreery Tue, 08 Apr 2008 01:39:07 +0000 http://savageminds.org/2008/04/07/scale-making-in-my-ear/#comment-278276 Serendipitously, I have been asked to review a seriously good book, Sunderland, Patricia L. and Rita M. Denny (2007) _Doing Anthropology in Consumer Research_. For those who might be interested, it provides, through a series of case studies, an ethnography of ethnography conducted on behalf of corporate clients, addressing the analytic, presentation, and ethical issues that arise when anthropologists work in the liminal zone between disciplinary demands and the circumstances of corporate work. It offers the best articulation of cultural analysis, as opposed to "a psychological motivation, rational action or normative frequency box" that I have ever seen and also addresses issues raised by new information technologies, video and digital photography. Yes, I recommend the book. I mention it here, however, because of a passage that bears directly on "scale." bq. As Dominique Desjeux, a professor of anthropology at the Sorbonne with an active consumer research consultancy, has formulated it, in anthropological practice, the research focus, "the zoom," is set to a different scale of observation, the scale of the social. More specifically, as Desjeux notes, the heuristic scale for "ethnomarketing" (a term he coined with Sophie Taponier to refer to the application of anthropology to marketing) is often the micro-social (the realm of personal interactions and small groups) with consideration of the meso-social (organizations, institutions, systems of actions) and the macro-social (national, international, global) scales as context. The focus of cultural analysis on the social scale means that the kinds of questions one asks of data in culturally analytic consumer research are often different than those asked in other consumer research analyses—the issues are examined through a different lens of refraction—and thus the answers one derives are different as well, even if at first glance the questions can seem the same. Serendipitously, I have been asked to review a seriously good book, Sunderland, Patricia L. and Rita M. Denny (2007) _Doing Anthropology in Consumer Research_. For those who might be interested, it provides, through a series of case studies, an ethnography of ethnography conducted on behalf of corporate clients, addressing the analytic, presentation, and ethical issues that arise when anthropologists work in the liminal zone between disciplinary demands and the circumstances of corporate work. It offers the best articulation of cultural analysis, as opposed to “a psychological motivation, rational action or normative frequency box” that I have ever seen and also addresses issues raised by new information technologies, video and digital photography. Yes, I recommend the book.

I mention it here, however, because of a passage that bears directly on “scale.”

bq. As Dominique Desjeux, a professor of anthropology at the Sorbonne with an active consumer research consultancy, has formulated it, in anthropological practice, the research focus, “the zoom,” is set to a different scale of observation, the scale of the social. More specifically, as Desjeux notes, the heuristic scale for “ethnomarketing” (a term he coined with Sophie Taponier to refer to the application of anthropology to marketing) is often the micro-social (the realm of personal interactions and small groups) with consideration of the meso-social (organizations, institutions, systems of actions) and the macro-social (national, international, global) scales as context. The focus of cultural analysis on the social scale means that the kinds of questions one asks of data in culturally analytic consumer research are often different than those asked in other consumer research analyses—the issues are examined through a different lens of refraction—and thus the answers one derives are different as well, even if at first glance the questions can seem the same.

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]]> By: Prudence http://savageminds.org/2008/04/07/scale-making-in-my-ear/comment-page-1/#comment-278041 Prudence Mon, 07 Apr 2008 23:39:29 +0000 http://savageminds.org/2008/04/07/scale-making-in-my-ear/#comment-278041 Is this an example of scale-making? (from today's "NYT":http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/world/europe/08torch.html ) "The prospect of the Chinese Olympic torch traveling through Europe’s cities — from Athens to Istanbul, St. Petersburg, London and now Paris — has even created a bond between groups of protesters who previously had little in common. In Paris, at the Trocadero opposite the Eiffel Tower, Amnesty International, the human rights group and Reporters Without Borders, which advocates greater press freedom, protested side by side with representatives from a banned underground Chinese democracy party, Taiwan nationalists and proponents of independence for the Uighurs, a Muslim minority group in western China. “We all have the same problem,” Can Asgar, a leader of the Uighur diaspora in Munich, yelled into a microphone at Trocadero. “Freedom for Uighurs. Freedom for Tibet. We must fight together.” " Is this an example of scale-making?

(from today’s “NYT”:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/world/europe/08torch.html ) “The prospect of the Chinese Olympic torch traveling through Europe’s cities — from Athens to Istanbul, St. Petersburg, London and now Paris — has even created a bond between groups of protesters who previously had little in common. In Paris, at the Trocadero opposite the Eiffel Tower, Amnesty International, the human rights group and Reporters Without Borders, which advocates greater press freedom, protested side by side with representatives from a banned underground Chinese democracy party, Taiwan nationalists and proponents of independence for the Uighurs, a Muslim minority group in western China. “We all have the same problem,” Can Asgar, a leader of the Uighur diaspora in Munich, yelled into a microphone at Trocadero. “Freedom for Uighurs. Freedom for Tibet. We must fight together.” “

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]]> By: yoni http://savageminds.org/2008/04/07/scale-making-in-my-ear/comment-page-1/#comment-277625 yoni Mon, 07 Apr 2008 19:32:50 +0000 http://savageminds.org/2008/04/07/scale-making-in-my-ear/#comment-277625 re: geographers, Neil Smith also makes some interesting points about scale in his earlier works; I'll see if I can dig up the references. re: geographers, Neil Smith also makes some interesting points about scale in his earlier works; I’ll see if I can dig up the references.

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]]> By: Adam http://savageminds.org/2008/04/07/scale-making-in-my-ear/comment-page-1/#comment-277365 Adam Mon, 07 Apr 2008 15:53:35 +0000 http://savageminds.org/2008/04/07/scale-making-in-my-ear/#comment-277365 Best SM post title evar. Maybe because I took it too literally... You may wish to investigate more geographers on this, natch, but along the related theme "the politics of scale." Herod and Wright's Geographies of Power is a great set of essays on the subject, very clear and comprehensive - here's a review: http://www.ggy.uga.edu/people/faculty/aherod/pdf_files/canadiangeographer.pdf Best SM post title evar. Maybe because I took it too literally…

You may wish to investigate more geographers on this, natch, but along the related theme “the politics of scale.” Herod and Wright’s Geographies of Power is a great set of essays on the subject, very clear and comprehensive – here’s a review: http://www.ggy.uga.edu/people/faculty/aherod/pdf_files/canadiangeographer.pdf

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