Abstract
Scale is a powerful concept, a lens that shapes how we perceive problems and solutions in common-pool resource governance. Yet, scale is often treated as a relatively stable and settled concept in commons scholarship. This paper reviews the origins and evolution of scalar thinking in commons scholarship in contrast with theories of scale in human geography and political ecology that focus on scale as a relational, power-laden process. Beginning with early writings on scale and the commons, this paper traces the emergence of an explicit scalar epistemology that orders both spatial and conceptual relationships vertically, as hierarchically nested levels. This approach to scale underpins a shared conceptualization of common-pool resource systems but inevitably illuminates certain questions and relationships while simultaneously obscuring others. Drawing on critiques of commonplace assumptions about scale from geography, we reread this dominant scalar framework for its analytic limitations and unintended effects. Drawing on examples from small-scale fisheries governance throughout, we contrast what is made visible in the commons through the standard approach to scale against an alternative, process-based approach to scale. We offer a typology of distinct dimensions and interrelated moments that produce scale in the commons coupled with new empirical and reflexive scale questions to be explored. We argue that engaging with theoretical advances on the production of scale in scholarship on the commons can generate needed attention to power and long-standing blind spots, enlivening our understanding of the dynamically scaled nature of the commons.
Highlights
Scale is a powerful concept, offering a lens that shapes how we perceive the world and related problems and solutions to complex human-environment dilemmas in the commons
An illustration: Rereading scale and gender in small-scale fisheries policy Here, we briefly demonstrate our own efforts to apply these steps in our research on gender and SSF policy change, focusing on the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the Context of Poverty Eradication and Food Security
Commons scholars are increasingly interested in the dynamics of multi-level governance and cross-scalar institutional arrangements in common-pool resources (CPRs) governance
Summary
Scale is a powerful concept, offering a lens that shapes how we perceive the world and related problems and solutions to complex human-environment dilemmas in the commons. Studying how common-pool resources (CPRs) are governed inevitably entails making choices about the level of environmental and sociopolitical organization used to frame our analysis. Whether or not our various choices and related assumptions about scale are made explicit, they inflect our conclusions: notions of optimal water governance shapeshift when viewed from the perspective of a downstream village or the wider watershed; perceptions of sustainable forest use change across timescales of a decade or a generation; the stakes in fisheries management differ when framed as a local, national or regional dilemma. While commons scholars have made instrumental contributions to theorizing multi-scalar dimensions of environmental governance, in recent decades, scale itself has been treated as a relatively stable and implicit element of analysis, providing structure for the examination of other dynamics and entities of interest in the commons
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