What makes ecology 'political'?: Rethinking 'scale' in political ecology

Abstract

This essay explores the ways in which concepts of 'scale' are deployed in political ecology to explain the outcomes of ecological and social change. It argues that political ecologists need to pay closer attention to how scale is produced and used to interpret the experience of spatiotemporal difference and change so as to make ecology the object of politics, policy-making and political action. It outlines an alternative approach that focuses on how three moments of action - operation, observation, and interpretation - work together to produce scale as a configuration and range of values that articulate differential sensibilities and political differences regarding changes to socialized land..