Scale: Discourse and Dimensions of Social Life / Edition 1

by E. Summerson Carr, Michael Lempert

Overview

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Wherever we turn, we see diverse things scaled for us, from cities to economies, from history to love. We know scale by many names and through many familiar antinomies: local and global,micro and macroevents to name a few. Even the most critical among us often proceed with our analysis as if such scales were the ready-made platforms of social life, rather than asking how, why, and to what effect are scalar distinctions forged in the first place.
 
How do scalar distinctions help actors and analysts alike make sense of and navigate their social worlds? What do these distinctions reveal and what do they conceal? How are scales construed and what effects do they have on the way those who abide by them think and act? This pathbreaking volume attends to the practical labor of scale-making and the communicative practices this labor requires. From an ethnographic perspective, the authors demonstrate that scale is practice and process before it becomes product, whether in the work of projecting the commons, claiming access to the big picture, or scaling the seriousness of a crime.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520291799
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	08/18/2016
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	276
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

E. Summerson Carr is Associate Professor, School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago. 

Michael Lempert is Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

List of Tables xi

Introduction: Pragmatics of Scale E. Summerson Carr Michael Lempert 1

Part 1 Scalar Projects: Promises and Precarities

1 Projecting Presence: Aura and Oratory in William Jennings Bryan's Presidential Races Richard Bauman 25

2 Interaction Rescaled: How Buddhist Debate Became a Diasporic Pedagogy Michael Lempert 52

3 Shrinking Indigenous Language in the Yukon Barbra A. Meek 70

Part 2 Interscalarity: Imagination and Institution

4 Scale-Making: Comparison and Perspective as Ideological Projects Susan Gal 91

5 Balancing the Scales of Justice in Tonga Susan U. Philips 112

6 Interscaling Awe, De-escalating Disaster E. Summerson Carr Brooke Fisher 133

Part 3 Predatory Scales: Encompassment and Evaluation

7 Scaling Red and the Horror of Trademark Constantine V. Nakassis 159

8 Semiotic Vinification and the Scaling of Taste Michael Silverstein 185

9 Going Upscale: Scales and Scale-Climbing as Ideological Projects Judith T. Irvine 213

Acknowledgments 233

References Cited 235

Contributors 251

Index 255