Problems of Scale Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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A Large Divide exists between natural and social scientists across the disciplines in terms of how they understand scale in studies of the environment and society. This divide has led to disparate conceptions and uses of scale and few attempts at bridging the divide (even within disciplines). On one side is an understanding of scale that is derived largely from the physical sciences. On the other are conceptions of scale that are a part of traditions within geography and related disciplines that are influenced by critical social theory.

Physical Science Conceptions

Physical science traditions consider three basic types of scale: Process scale, observation scale, and model or conceptual scale. To characterize fully each type of scale, one must specify the following: (1) support (the spatial/temporal coverage (i.e., resolution) of an individual observation or manifestation of a process), (2) spacing (the spatial/temporal distance between observations or areas in which a process occurs) and (3) extent (the total coverage encompassing the total area in which observations are made or a process occurs). It is important to note that scale is not an active thing. Processes occur across a range of scales some of which are arbitrarily delimited and ascribed more significance. However, the scale itself is not the important feature, the importance is how the particular process under examination is manifested at the scale. In short, processes do not create scales, they are only manifested at some scales and not at others.

The scale problem is how to take an observation collected at a local scale and determine how the process would be observed at some other scale (e.g., regional). This problem ultimately incorporates scaling of each support, spacing, and extent. Depending on the process being examined, some of these translations are relatively simple, e.g., downscaling the observational extent is trivial in that it only means ignoring some of the data. The most difficult component is upscaling or downscaling the support. This is analogous to changing the pixel size of a remotely sensed image or deciding whether to use census tracts, counties, or states as the spatial unit of analysis. Given some observation of a process in a one meter square pixel, what would be the observation at 100 square kilometers? However, scaling of the conceptual understanding is even more problematic since we are attempting to ascertain some mapping between some observations collected at a particular scale to determine the outcome of a process at that scale. Ultimately we want our conceptual framework to allow us to take the same mapping with the same variables collected at a different scale to give us the representation of the process at the new scale. Thus, we are seeking a proper weighting of, for example, the small scale input variables to determine the larger scale manifestation of the process. In a trivial case where the weighing is linear and the larger scale manifestation is solely determined by the process at small scales, the larger scale is simply the mean of the small scale.

However, many processes occurring in the real world are highly nonlinear, and not all scales are equally relevant to manifestation. Here it is important to keep in mind the relationships among the process, observation, and model or conceptual scale. The ultimate goal of all research is to obtain some understanding of the process being examined. We observe some manifestation of the process, and our understanding of the process is to some amount determined by the support, spacing and extent of our observations. These observations are used to develop or confirm our conceptual framework (i.e., hypothesis testing and theory development). Our conceptual understanding is then scale dependent, in that it is derived from specific observations gathered at some scale. For example, the dominant mechanism responsible for the observation of some process at a large scale may have very little to do with the individual small-scale manifestationswhat is observed at the large-scale is not simply determined by the aggregation of that observed at the small scale. In this case, the issue is complicated by the fact that our conceptual understanding (i.e., the hypothesis that the larger scale process would be observed as the aggregation of the small scale realizations) is wrong, and thus the conceptual scale does not mesh with the actual process.

The issue is further complicated when we do not have observations at different levels of support. Thus we must attempt to ascertain how the larger scale manifestation of the process relates to the small scale without having any actual observations on which to base our understanding. Thus, we must use our conceptual understanding to derive hypotheses that can ultimately be tested to ascertain what the observations at larger scales would be. This is ultimately the scale problem, regardless of what the actual process being examined, and it applies equally to both studies of society and the environment.

Social Science Conceptions

The above discussion is derived largely from a physical science perspective. A very different idea of scale can be found in research influenced by critical social theory where scale is discussed in terms of “geographical scale,” the “production of scale,” and the “politics of scale.” A common conception of scale in this realm of research is that scale is socially constructed, and that the active scaling of human activity can be subjected to critical analysis. The argument here is that one should not take scales such as the urban, regional, national, or local as having some a priori essence. Rather we should examine how different processes of human organization came to be manifested at such scales in the first place.

Scales and their interrelationships are produced by political-economic struggles among different groups with different interests. At different points in history, particular scalar hegemonies can emerge. For example, the national scale has long been a dominant scale at which states, economies, language, culture, and citizenship are organized. However, that hegemony is currently being challenged by a wide ranging process of “glocalization” by which political and economic organization at local and global scales is becoming increasingly important. For example, the rise of regional economic clusters has called into question the former coherence of national economies, and the emergence of supranational state forms like the European Union has undermined the notion that state sovereignty should exist only at the national scale.

Researchers encounter problems when they assume the particular qualities of a given scale are natural; they should instead critically analyze the social processes through which that scale came to be associated with those qualities. A common example is in development studies when researchers call for localization of power in development planning and implementation in order to achieve goals of sustainable development. Such goals may or may not be achieved by localization. It is not the scale of organization that produces the development outcome; outcomes are produced by social actors pursuing particular agendas. Localization is always merely a strategy used by people who benefit from organization at that scale. Believing a particular outcome will automatically result from a particular scale of human organization, without full consideration or knowledge of the processes operating at and on that scale, leads to what we call a “scalar trap.” Thus, since scales are socially produced, when we observe a process of marked rescaling, our first instinct should be to look at how power has shifted from one group of people to another.

Bridging these two approaches to scale is a difficult task. One possible way is to suggest that physical science conceptions are really not that different from those in social science, and that the terms of the social-science side can be translated into the terms of the physical science tradition. In this light, all physical and human political and economic processes potentially exist at all possible scales.

When geographers critically analyze the national scale and the current challenges to its hegemony, we must first be specific about the particular process(es) that are in question, for example economic policy making. To say that the national scale was “created” or “forged” is to say that economic policy making became manifested at some point in history primarily at the national scale (the support of the economic policy process scale). This process scale has, therefore, partially determined the observational scale; e.g., we now use national economic statistics in studies of the effect of economic policies on wealth disparity across the globe. When national economic policy making is “re-scaled” to global entities, this is similar to saying that the dominant level of support for the policy process scale is being changed from a national to a global level of support.

Finally, we enter a “scalar trap” when the support of the economic policy conceptual scale (how we believe it operates) is applied uncritically without regard to the support of the economic policy process scale (the process that is actually occurring). Developing a common language like this is one way to create cross environment-society understanding of problems of scale. No matter the research, when scale becomes merely a stand-in or shorthand for the human and physical processes we are studying, then we are narrowing our vision of what the world is and how to study it.

Bibliography:

Michael J. Bradshaw, George W. White, Joseph Dymond, and Dydia DeLyser, Contemporary World Regional Geography: Global Connections, Local Voices (McGraw Hill, 2004);
Crang, Cultural Geography (Routledge, 1998);
Gregory, Geographical Imaginations (Blackwell, 1994);
A. Quattrochi, S.J. Walsh, J.R. Jensen, and M.K. Ridd, “Remote Sensing: Prospects, Challenges, and Emergent Opportunities,” in G.L. Gaile and C.J. Willmott, eds., Geography in America at the Dawn of the 21st Century (Oxford University Press, 2004).