The concept of scale in human geography has been profoundly transformed over the past 20 years. And yet, despite the insights that both empirical and theoretical research on scale have generated, there is today no consensus on what is meant by the term or how it should be operationalized. In this paper we critique the dominant – hierarchical – conception of scale, arguing it presents a number of problems that cannot be overcome simply by adding on to or integrating with network theorizing. We thereby propose to eliminate scale as a concept in human geography. In its place we offer a different ontology, one that so flattens scale as to render the concept unnecessary. We conclude by addressing some of the political implications of a human geography without scale.

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Human geography without scale

The concept of coloniality of Being emerged in discussions of a diverse group of scholars doing work on coloniality and decolonization.2 More particularly, we owe the idea to Walter D. Mignolo, who...

On the coloniality of being: Contributions to the development of a concept

Tweets and the Streets analyses the culture of the new protest movements of the 21st century. From the Arab Spring to the "indignados" protests in Spain and the Occupy movement, Paolo Gerbaudo examines the relationship between the rise of social media and the emergence of new forms of protest. Gerbaudo argues that activists' use of Twitter and Facebook does not fit with the image of a "cyberspace" detached from physical reality. Instead, social media is used as part of a project of re-appropriation of public space, which involves the assembling of different groups around "occupied" places such as Cairo's Tahrir Square or New York's Zuccotti Park. An exciting and invigorating journey through the new politics of dissent, Tweets and the Streets points both to the creative possibilities and to the risks of political evanescence which new media brings to the contemporary protest experience.

http://www.tacticalmediafiles.net/mmbase/attachments/5000/Tweets__the_Streets_Introduction.pdf

Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism

Assisted reproductive technology (ART) makes babies and parents at once. Drawing on science and technology studies, feminist theory, and historical and ethnographic analyses of ART clinics, Charis Thompson explores the intertwining of biological reproduction with the personal, political, and technological meanings of reproduction. She analyzes the "ontological choreography" at ART clinics -- the dynamics by which technical, scientific, kinship, gender, emotional, legal, political, financial, and other matters are coordinated -- using ethnographic data to address questions usually treated in the abstract. Reproductive technologies, says Thompson, are part of the increasing tendency to turn social problems into biomedical questions and can be used as a lens through which to see the resulting changes in the relations between science and society. After giving an account of the book's disciplinary roots in science and technology studies and in feminist scholarship on reproduction, Thompson comes to the ethnographic heart of her study. She develops her concept of ontological choreography by examining ART's normalization of "miraculous" technology (including the etiquette of technological sex); gender identity in the assigned roles of mother and father and the conservative nature of gender relations in the clinic; the naturalization of technologically assisted kinship and procreative intent; and patients' pursuit of agency through objectification and technology. Finally, Thompson explores the economies of reproductive technologies, concluding with a speculative and polemical look at the "biomedical mode of reproduction" as a predictor of future relations between science and society.

Making Parents: The Ontological Choreography of Reproductive Technologies

This article explores the links between social media and public space within the #Occupy Everywhere movements. Whereas listservs and websites helped give rise to a widespread logic of networking within the movements for global justice of the 1990s–2000s, I argue that social media have contributed to an emerging logic of aggregation in the more recent #Occupy movements—one that involves the assembling of masses of individuals from diverse backgrounds within physical spaces. However, the recent shift toward more decentralized forms of organizing and networking may help to ensure the sustainability of the #Occupy movements in a posteviction phase. [social movements, globalization, political protest, public space, social media, new technologies, inequality]

Reflections on #Occupy Everywhere: Social media, public space, and emerging logics of aggregation

Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. 2004. New York. Penguin Books. 448 pages. ISBN: 0143035592 (paper).

Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

We the People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship. Etienne Balibar. Princeton University Press: Princeton, New Jersey, 2004. ISBN: 0691089906 (paper) and 0691089892 (cloth)

We the People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship

The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream. Jeremy Rifkin. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/ Penguin, 2004. 434 pages (cloth), 448 pages (paper). ISBN: 1585424358 (paper), 1585423459 (cloth).

The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream

The Meaning of Europe: Variety and Contention within and among Nations. edited by Mikael af Malmborg and Bo Strath. Berg: Oxford, New York. 2002. ISBN. 85973581 9.

The Meaning of Europe: Variety and Contention within and among Nations

Making Modern Mothers: Ethics and Family Planning in Urban Greece. Heather Paxson. University of California Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles. 2004. 335 pp. ISBN 0520-22371-2 (cloth), 0-520-23820-6 (paper).

Thomas Taaffe

Papers

Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

We the People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship

The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream

The Meaning of Europe: Variety and Contention within and among Nations

Making Modern Mothers: Ethics and Family Planning in Urban Greece