https://doi.org/10.25058/20112742.n39.02

Andrew Herod
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5668-3803
University of Georgia, USA
aherod@uga.edu

Abstract:

Debates about geographical scale have dramatically shaped anglophonic human geography in the past three decades. Two principal sets of questions have been at the forefront of discussion: what is the ontological status of scale?; and how do the ways in which we imagine that the world is scaled geographically affect how we behave in it? These questions have been especially significant in the context of arguments over the nature of globalization, where the changing relationship between different scales is a central consideration – for instance, globalization has variously been viewed as representing an undermining of national sovereignty, the delocalization of social life, and so forth. In this paper, then, I outline some of the main elements of these debates.

Keywords: Ontology, scalar metaphors, local, global.