‘The Production of Space’, in: Frans Jacobi, Imagine, Space Poetry, Copenhagen, 1996, unpaginated.

The Production of Space

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers

The Limits to Capital

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

WOMEN Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject, by Saba Mahmood Princeton, NJ and Oxford, UK: Princeton University Press, 2004 xvi + 199 pages Gloss, to p 203 Refs to p 223 Index to p 233 $55 cloth; $1795 paper This book explores "the conceptual challenges that women's involvement in the Islamist movement poses to feminist theory in particular and to secular-liberal thought in general through an ethnographic account of the urban women's mosque movement that is part of the Islamic Revival in Cairo, Egypt" (p 2) However, Saba Mahmood promises more than an ethnography based on two years of fieldwork (1995-1997) She embarks on an intellectual journey of selfreflection in which she has come "to believe that a certain amount of self-scrutiny and skepticism is essential regarding the certainty of my own political commitments, when trying to understand the lives of others who do not necessarily share these commitments" (p xi) By refusing to take her own political stance as the necessary lens through which the analysis proceeds, the author opens up the possibility that "my analysis may come to complicate the vision of human flourishing that I hold most dear and which has provided the bedrock of my personal existence" (p xii) It is necessary, the author cautions as she embarks upon her inquiry, not to assume that the political position we uphold will necessarily be vindicated or provide the ground for our theoretical analysis As readers, we are invited to join her in "parochializing our assumptions, about the constitutive relationship between action and embodiment, resistance and agency, self and authority - that inform most feminist judgments from across a broad range of the political spectrum about non-liberal movements such as the women's mosque movement" (p 38) It is within that spirit that I have critiqued this book The five chapters are a running argument with and against key analytic concepts in liberal thought as these concepts have come to inform various strands of feminist theory through which non-liberal movements, such as the women's mosque movement, are analyzed Through each chapter Mahmood makes her ethnographic talk back to the normative liberal assumptions about human nature against which such a movement is held accountable "The Subject of Freedom" illustrates the different ways in which the activism of the mosque movement challenges the liberal conception of politics Mahmood analyzes the conception of self, moral agency, and politics that undergird the practices of this non-liberal movement in order to come to an understanding of the historical projects that animate it The pious subjects of the mosque movement occupy an uncomfortable place in feminist scholarship because they pursue practices and ideals embedded in a tradition that has historically accorded women a subordinate status "Topography of the Piety Movement" provides a brief sketch of the historical development against which the contemporary mosque movement has emerged and critically engages with themes within scholarship of Islamic modernism regarding such movements We sense the broad-based character of the women's mosque movement through the author's description and analysis of three of six mosques where she concentrated her fieldwork Despite the differences among the mosque groups - ranging from the poorest to the upper-middle income neighborhoods of Cairo - they all shared a concern for the increased secularization of Egyptian society and illustrate the increasing respect accorded to the da 'iya preacher/religious teacher (who undertakes da'waliterally call, summons or appeal that in the 20th century came to be associated with proselytization activity) "Women and the Da'wa" (pp 64-72) is particularly insightful, as the author juxtaposes the emergence of secular liberalism with the da'wa movement and concludes that "the modernist project of the regulation of religious sensibilities, undertaken by a range of postcolonial states (and not simply Muslim states), has elicited in its wake a variety of resistances, responses and challenges …

Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject

Over the last ten years, scholars in human geography have been paying increasing theoretical and empirical attention to understanding the ways in which the production of scale is implicated in the production of space. Overwhelmingly, this work reflects a social constructionist approach, which situates capitalist production (and the role of the state, capital, labor and nonstate political actors) as of central concern. What is missing from this discussion about the social construction of scale is serious attention to the relevance of social reproduction and consumption. In this article I review the important literature on scale construction and argue for enlarging our scope for understanding scale to include the complex processes of social reproduction and consumption. I base my critique on a short case study which illustrates that attention to other processes besides production and other systems of domination besides capitalism can enhance our theorizing and improve our attempts to effect real social change.

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The social construction of scale

Neil Brenner’s response (this issue) to ‘The social construction of scale’ (Marston, 2000) raises a host of excellent points that might, as he intends, help focus and refine the blossoming discussion of geographical scale. His larger argument, that the popularity of scale theories has led to a certain ‘analytical blunting’ of this sharply defined concept and that scale is increasingly conflated with broader discussions of space, is surely correct. Yet two aspects of Brenner’s response are troubling: first, the idiosyncratic genealogy of scale theories he wishes to assert; and second, the refusal of feminist arguments about the scale of the household. Both moves compound and exemplify rather than resolve the problem he identifies. In the hope of sharpening the analytical debate, therefore, we would like to offer a brief sympathetic critique of these two foundations of Brenner’s approach to scale theory. Our argument is that the analytical blunting of scale can best be countered through the constant reinvention of scale theory ahead of the fetishist juggernaut. For exactly this reason the original article insisted on the constitutive but largely unheralded role of social reproduction and consumption, in conjunction with social production, in the production of geographical scale. It seems to us that Brenner’s commitment to a politics of scale is, following Lefebvre, only ‘spacedeep’. Brenner argues quite astutely that in the current literature there is a ‘noticeable slippage’ between ‘notions of geographical scale’ and other geographical concepts such as ‘place, locality, territory, and space’. At least methodologically, he wants to establish a radical separation between arguments concerning the production of space and the production of scale to retard any morphing of scale into space and vice versa. This argument makes sense, up to a point: scale is a produced societal metric that differentiates space; it is not space per se. Yet ‘geographical scale’ is not simply a ‘hierarchically

States, scales and households: limits to scale thinking? A response to Brenner

Notes on Contributors. Life's Work: An Introductionm Review and Critique. Katharyne Mitchell, Sallie A Marston and Cindi Katz. Part I: Education and the Making of the Modern (Trans)national Subject. 1. Imagined Country: National Environmental Ideologies in School Geography Textbooks: John Morgan. 2. Indigenous Professionalization: Transnational Social Reproduction in the Andes. Nina Laurie, Robert Andolina and Sarah Radcliffe. 3. Producing the Future: Getting To Be British. Jean Lave. Part II: Domesticity and Other Homely Spaces of Modernity. 1. Domesticating Birth in the Hospital: "Family-Centered" Birth and the Emergence of "Homelike" Birthing Rooms. Maria Fannin. 2. Adolescent Latina Bodyspaces: Making Homegirls, Homebodies and Homeplaces. Melissa Hyams. 3. Of Fictional Cities and "Diasporic" Aesthetics. Rosemary Marangoly George. Part III: Modern Migrants/Flexible Citizens: Cultural Constructions of Belonging and Alienation. 1. Valuing Childcare: Troubles in Suburbia. Geraldine Pratt. 2. Toque una Ranchera, Por Favor. Altha J Cravey. 3. Human Smuggling, the Transnational Imaginary, and Everyday Geographies of the Nation-State. Alison Mountz. Index.

Sallie A. Marston

Papers

The social construction of scale

Human geography without scale

States, scales and households: limits to scale thinking? A response to Brenner

Life's Work: Geographies of Social Reproduction

Introduction: Life's Work: An Introduction, Review and Critique