Introduction: (Re)thinking the scales of lived experience

The past 20 years have seen considerable development with regard to how human geographers conceptualise the relational (inter)connections between experiences in-place and those larger forces which originate at socially constructed scales such as the regional, national and/or global (see, for example, Marston 2000; Sheppard 2002; Kitchin and Wilton 2003). Yet, there remains little agreement as to whether scale should be elevated to the level of such core concepts as ‘space’ and ‘place’ in the geographical canon, or fully dismissed in the pursuit of uncovering the spatiality that underpins social, economic and political systems (Paasi 2004). In fact, most recently Marston et al. (2005) have called into question the very ontological and epistemological status of scale. They argue that the common (mis)use of scale as a vertical (and consequently hierarchical) counterpart to the horizontal notion of space has contributed to a disempowering discourse on the experiential dimensions of contemporary forces of globalisation (where globalisation is often thought of as a scalar process that connects individual citizens to the global capitalist economy). They contend, for example, that the failure to assign a ‘home’ to globalization evacuate[s] the possibilities of dynamism and efficacy in everyday practice . . . the current intellectual preoccupation with globalization blinds us – researchers, policymakers and laypeople – to the ways ‘global’ discourses produce identities that disempower us as agents. (Marston et al. 2005, 427) Rather than signalling an end to employing the notion of scale in geography, critiques such as Marston et al.'s point to a renewed vigour among geographers interested in exploring how practices of scale can illuminate the puzzling yet persistent connections between people's lives in-place and the larger forces that shape them. To the point, an experiential approach to scale can help to move us away from rigid hierarchies toward a use of scale as a representation of micro to macro level phenomena that are salient to people's everyday lives such as the body, home, school, community and nation. Just as the topographic lines on a map represent a complex multidimensional landscape, human experiences of everyday life trace the contours of a much more complex picture of social, cultural, political and economic interconnections across scales. Understanding how such contours are established, maintained and contested assists us in making sense of broader forces manifest in the spaces and places around us, as well as our role in shaping those forces. Spatio-temporal processes such as identity formation, conflict, development and governance happen simultaneously in spatially disparate localities around the globe and are experienced at very intimate local scales such as those of the bodily, inter-personal and community. In this sense, the local is not simply one piece of an aggregate global but is a representative fraction (to return to our map metaphor) of an unfathomably complex, yet lived-in world. It is a way of reading the impacts of these contemporary spatio-temporal processes through the everyday lives of individuals, communities and societies (see also Swyngedouw's (2004) ‘glocalization’). An experiential approach helps us to avoid the much-criticised ‘God's Eye’ hierarchical perspective by privileging the role of human agency in supra-local encounters. It is from this perspective where we locate a politics of scale (Cox 1998; Smith 1998) and its critical analysis of dominant scalar configurations. Studies ranging across neoliberal workfare (Peck 2002), disability activism (Kitchin and Wilton 2003) and aboriginal land claims (Swyngedouw 2004) have demonstrated how taken-for-granted political hierarchies that are imposed on individuals, communities and societies can be resisted, ignored or re-configured through the agency of subordinate groups. In this special collection, three studies examining scale from an experiential perspective are showcased. The contributors address the ‘scale of experience’– how the lived realities of macro-scale social, economic and political forces are played out at the micro-scales of the body, inter-personal, or community. By doing so, the collection illustrates ways in which people can invoke scalar discourses and experiences to engage in the world and resist threats imposed on personal or community identities. Using diverse methodological approaches and working across disparate subject areas, the papers demonstrate how people come to know about scale (and live scaled lives) in and through everyday settings. The authors’ foci illustrate how processes arising at hegemonic global, national, regional, local, community and/or residential scales enter and shape everyday life through diverse happenings. The contributors also explore how embodied performances in-place are used to respond to and influence these (often) supra-local constructs which, for some, inform their daily lifeworlds, and for others inform their sometimes exceptional practices of citizen engagement and acts of resistance. The backdrop for Jen Gieseking's examination of the lived experience of scale is a place that many of us know all too well: the college campus. She intertwines temporality (namely intergenerational experiences) and the scaled spatiality of campus life to show how experiences ranging from the bodily to the global shape the daily lives of students at an elite women's college in the United States (US). Jeanne Kay Guelke's paper also centres on the experience of women in the US. She offers a critical examination of the micro-geography of one woman's life in a Mormon settlement at the turn of the twentieth century. Her focus is on this woman's engagement within a particular social institution, that of the Mormon Church. She draws on the concepts of social capital and parochial space to assist in explaining how both kinship and religious networks operated at multiple scales which shaped how Mrs Gardner lived out her very local life. Finally, Caroline Desbiens sets out to examine the role(s) of scale in the (re)formulation of competing national identities between the Eeyou Istchee and Québécois in Quebec, Canada. In so doing, she brings a novel scalar perspective to the recent literature on the politics of scale with her specific focus on nature (water) and the politics of identity. The topics of these papers could not be more distinct. However, the arguments put forth by the contributors collectively assist in illustrating how people living in disparate regions and at different temporal periods can experience scaled processes in strikingly similar ways and even engage in similar responses, whether through collective or individual acts of agency.

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