The scaling of social systems gives rise to a ‘vertical’ ordering that combines with the more familiar ‘horizontal’ ordering by place. But so far this phenomenon has been examined mainly from a political standpoint, and has not as yet received an adequate regulationist treatment. The regulation approach is at heart a systems theory, whereby innovations in accumulation and regulation—whatever their origins—will tend to be selected and woven into a stable pattern if they contribute to the expanded reproduction of capital. It is argued here that the viability of regimes of accumulation, and of modes of regulation, depends in part upon whether an appropriate scale division of labour is established between their component activities. It is suggested from the analysis that it is possible on this basis to develop a regulationist account of the fundamental tendency towards the integration and division of societies at different scales, and the emergence of dominant societal units in each epoch.
By using a framework of spatial categories to illuminate social change, scale analysis intersects with a series of arguments that have been put forward over the years regarding the relationship between society and space. The coherence of scale analysis and its contribution to our understanding of this relationship are examined here, with a focus particularly upon the influential writings of Swyngedouw. It is argued that these writings are haunted by a spatial fetishism that has deconstructive consequences, confounding the distinction between society and space upon which their composition depends. But this conclusion points (through a sort of ‘spectral logic’) towards a wider deconstruction, which suggests that the distinction between these terms or realms is itself the product of a kind of ‘scaling’. Despite its centrality to the development of geographical thought, and its congruence with other dualisms such as culture/nature, the juxtaposition of society and space remains the unexamined ground of much contemporary writing. Recent efforts by feminists and others to rework the notion of ‘space’ and indeed of ‘society’ would benefit from addressing these together in their articulation through the in-between-ness of scale.
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