Introduction

This chapter is about scale: what it is and how it matters. In particular, it is about why scale matters for studying, understanding and reshaping human–environment interactions in the pursuit of sustainability (see Chapter 14). This chapter encompasses ways of thinking about and using scale from a range of disciplines and subdisciplines such as human geography, environmental engineering, ecology, Earth sciences, physical geography, sociology and political science. It also attempts to move beyond disciplines into interdisciplinary ways of thinking about scale.

The two quotes above demonstrate that the concept of scale is an incredibly complex one. Indeed, after decades of trying to develop and clarify this concept, scale theorists (people who seek to make sense of scale and how we use it in scientific inquiry) have not yet been able to manage the task. As Sneddon et al. (2002) note in the first quote above, scale is one of the most important yet problematic concepts in ecology and social theory, and it is vital in any attempt to understand human–environment relations. According to Howitt (2002), scientific thinking about scale is far from being well-organised and defined.