Abstract
This paper argues that human geography’s scale debate has arrived at somewhat of an impasse surrounding scale’s relative position to ontology. Divides are most evident between those that see scales as ‘already existing’ and those considering this as a form of ‘ontological reification’ that stifles our understanding of politics. I suggest that reading the ‘politics of scale’ through Jacques Rancière’s political thinking, and in particular his aesthetic approach to the problem of ontological reductionism, can offer one way forward. It enables geographers to take existing ‘common-sense’ ideas around scale seriously whilst also being sensitive to emergent politics.
Highlights
The ‘politics of scale’ is a term coined by Neil Smith (2010 [1984]: 229) to attend to the processes through which scales are constructed and contested
This paper develops the thought of Jacques Ranciere, a key thinker infusing recent debates on the political, to offer one way forward for human geography’s scale debate and its divides around politics and ontology
Whilst I argue that there can be no panacea for the divides of the scale debate, I suggest that reading the ‘politics of scale’ through the political and aesthetic thinking of Jacques Ranciere can move us beyond the present theoretical impasse on scale’s relative position to ontology
Summary
The ‘politics of scale’ is a term coined by Neil Smith (2010 [1984]: 229) to attend to the processes through which scales are constructed and contested. Whilst for many Ranciere’s thought is useful in considering the ‘post-political’ nature of the contemporary governance (for example Swyngedouw, 2009), what draws me to him here is his approach to political change more broadly (Davidson and Iveson, 2014) It is his ‘aesthetic’ solution to the problem of ontological reductionism (a concern many scale theorists share) that I argue warrants attention. In turn, disrupts these normalized ways of making sense and transforms them (Ranciere, 1999) This aesthetic approach to politics, as we shall see, allows us to consider how social activity is shaped by inherited, shared, ‘common-sense’ whilst avoiding ontological theorizing and narrowing political possibilities. What is vital for scale theorists to consider is how common-sense on scales as vertical imaginaries is met with dissensus ‘on the ground’ (Ranciere, 2016a: 159)
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