Beyond rescaling: reintegrating the `national' as a dimension of scalar relations

Abstract

Among scholars of globalization and neoliberalism, there has been a marked turn away from the national as a relevant scale in today's world, with researchers arguing that the national is being `rescaled' to local, regional and global scales. This paper argues that we need to move beyond this rescaling argument to recognize that the national still is relevant in contemporary political economy. Seeing the national not as a discrete scale but as a dimension of political economic practice is an alternative analytical approach that treats the national as constitutively implicated in other scaled activities. Distinctions between one scale and another are not so clear. This approach enhances our understanding of contemporary patterns and processes because, instead of focusing on one set of scales or another, analysis can reveal relations among multiple scales. This approach also moves us beyond the historical periodization posited in the rescaling literature. Instead of providing descriptions of contemporary change in which the dominant national is giving way to a messier configuration of global and local scales, the idea of scales-as-dimensions offers a way of analysing scalar relations more generally. This can then be used in both contemporary and historical analysis. The rescaling argument treats the national largely as residual, which serves to draw our attention away from complex scalar practices without offering a truly different way of thinking about scalar relations.

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