Constructing Scale/Contesting Scale: Women's Movement and Rescaling Politics in Quebec

Abstract

Scalar shifts in public capacities and responsibilities are an important element of the way states have been restructuring in North America and in Europe. Women’s movements respond to these changes in various ways, including the rescaling of collective action. This article focuses on the rising importance of the (subprovincial) region in Quebec women’s movement politics to understand how new scales of action are constituted or granted a renewed importance by women’s movements. Drawing on theoretical contributions from the human geography literature on scale, state rescaling, and scalar politics, I show how the region has been materially and discursively constructed by Quebec women’s movement actors as a legitimate and relevant scale for feminist politics. This has involved an intricate and dynamic relationship with two different state projects of downward rescaling. Although it provided some real opportunities, it has also created difficulties and dilemmas for women’s movement actors, who have also contested the primacy of the region in Quebec government’s new scalar arrangements. This article proposes to shed more light on how particular scales—here, specifically the region1—come about and are granted a new or a renewed importance for collective action by social movements, in this case by the Quebec women’s movement.2 Social movement literature has been, until recently, of little help in understanding these changes. As Sewell has noted, with rare exceptions, the literature on SP13(4).book Page 462 Thursday, November 30, 2006 9:31 AM