TY - JOUR
T1 - Vicarious scale and instrumental imaginaries in community sustainable transitions
AU - Taylor Aiken, Gerald
AU - Eadson, Will
AU - Hobson, Kersty
AU - Dinnie, Liz
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - Community initiatives are often charged with scaling-up: growing, deepening their impacts, and seeding off new projects. The desire to scale-up comes from both within the community initiatives themselves, and is also encouraged by all levels of policy, from local government, to national and international frameworks such as the IPCC. This paper adds to critiques of this agenda, by leaning on human geography writings on scale, and introducing the concept of ‘vicarious scale’. This concept is drawn from empirical work which highlights the double move of scaling-up. This double move, first, restricts and contains community within a local, small, or narrow limit. Then, concurrently, expects this restricted community to have displaced effects: at a higher scale, or a distant point in time. It argues that the scaling-up expectations are both placed onto community initiatives and emerge from within them, and that these expectations are both counterproductive to realizing the full potential of community, and accompany an insertion of instrumental logic onto and into these community initiatives. Appreciating vicarious scale also has important practical implications for communities—not least being wary of the counterproductive and corrosive effects a will-to-grow can have.
AB - Community initiatives are often charged with scaling-up: growing, deepening their impacts, and seeding off new projects. The desire to scale-up comes from both within the community initiatives themselves, and is also encouraged by all levels of policy, from local government, to national and international frameworks such as the IPCC. This paper adds to critiques of this agenda, by leaning on human geography writings on scale, and introducing the concept of ‘vicarious scale’. This concept is drawn from empirical work which highlights the double move of scaling-up. This double move, first, restricts and contains community within a local, small, or narrow limit. Then, concurrently, expects this restricted community to have displaced effects: at a higher scale, or a distant point in time. It argues that the scaling-up expectations are both placed onto community initiatives and emerge from within them, and that these expectations are both counterproductive to realizing the full potential of community, and accompany an insertion of instrumental logic onto and into these community initiatives. Appreciating vicarious scale also has important practical implications for communities—not least being wary of the counterproductive and corrosive effects a will-to-grow can have.
KW - Community initiatives
KW - vicarious scale
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85131951490&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2022.102543
DO - 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2022.102543
M3 - Article
SN - 0959-3780
VL - 75
JO - Global Environmental Change
JF - Global Environmental Change
M1 - 102543
ER -