ABSTRACT
Geographical concepts – both metaphorical and analytical – have a prominent role in Science and Technology Studies (STS). Geographic metaphors are pervasive in STS (frontiers, situated knowledge, standpoints, boundary-work, immutable mobiles, the view from nowhere). Analytically, “places” and “sites” of knowledge production are key categories for many STS scholars.The “rise of a geographical perspective” (Shapin 1998) in STS began in the early 1970s with studies of scientific cultures in particular countries or regions. Over the subsequent decades, several waves of research on the significance of place for the practices and products of science have emerged (Henke and Gieryn 2008), and scholars are increasingly working at the intersection of geography and science studies (Goldman et al. 2011). For example, a recent volume on interdisciplinary geographies of science (Meusburger et al. 2010) demonstrates the ongoing value of studying science in relation to geographic space, place, and mobility. This chapter considers the geographical concept of scale and its relevance in understanding
the politics of science – particularly in the domain of environmental regulation. Since at least the early 1990s, scale has become a central and much-debated concept in the field of human geography. Scale is one of several key socio-spatial concepts, used in relation to place, positionality, mobility, and networks. Scale is often thought of as a “nested hierarchy of differentially sized and bounded spaces” (Marston et al. 2005: 416-17). Another way to think of scale is as the “level” at which particular processes operate, in contrast to other levels with different territorial scopes (for example, the neighborhood versus the city). Among human geographers, there appears to be a consensus that scale is always socially constructed and contested; therefore, the research focus is often on how a particular scale came into being or how political actors seek to shift decision-making processes from one scale to another. In STS, Fortun (2009: 75-76) has argued that notions of scale “require ethnographic scrutiny,” particularly as they operate in the natural, social, and computer sciences, because they provide an “inevitably limited”“way of seeing that frames and orients perspective.” In this chapter, I will treat scales as practical categories that are more or less taken for granted
in social life. Scales are “variably powerful and institutionalized sets of practices and discourses”
(Moore 2008: 213) that have observable effects on social relations. That is, they are socially constructed categories that vary in the degree to which they are taken to be naturally “given” (as opposed to fluid, artificial, or transient). I focus on political scale, the nested levels of government that serve as venues or entry points for people taking political action. I make two interrelated arguments about why this understanding of political scale is important for STS. First, scientific knowledge claims may be used to justify and institutionalize the scale at which decisions are made and problems are addressed. For example, science-based claims that the health or ecological impacts of an industry are felt in highly variable, locally-specific ways may bolster arguments that county, municipal, or individual levels of oversight are more appropriate than regulation under state or national law. Second, the scale of political engagement is likely to affect the construction of scientific knowledge, by framing and orienting perspectives.The kinds of questions asked, and knowledge produced, about the natural environment can be radically different, depending on whether they are viewed from a global, national, or local point of view.Therefore, conflicts over political scale may also, implicitly or explicitly, be conflicts over scientific research agendas and the recognition of particular sources of knowledge. I examine the relationship between political scale – in this case, the scale of environmental
governance – and the production of knowledge (and ignorance) about the environment, using the case of shale gas development in the United States. A new method of natural-gas extraction, hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”) is facilitating an energy boom across the United States, and there have been major social conflicts over its ecological, health, and socio-economic impacts.These clashes involve a debate about the appropriate scale at which political decisions about gas development and regulation should be made – the individual property, the municipality, the state, the nation, or even the watershed.These and other disputes over the scale of governance are important not only because of their regulatory outcomes, but also because they have important consequences for what is knowable, or even “askable” about the ecological, social, and economic implications of gas development. First I discuss the relevance of the human geography literature on the “politics of scale” to
STS. I then provide some background on the conflict over fracking, focusing on development of the Marcellus Shale in the northeastern U.S. Finally, I discuss three cases from the fracking debate that illustrate different ways in which political scale is linked to environmental knowledge production. In the conclusion, I reflect on the lessons these cases offer on how to create “less partial and distorted” (Harding 1991: 186) understandings of the consequences of extractive industries like shale gas.
