Scales

This contribution will focus on the politics of scales: traditionally conceived, by the positivist science, as hierarchical relational levels that vary from the dimension of the human body to the global, they are studied by post structural interpretations in terms of multiscalarity, processual rescaling, ideological constructions, and contextual pathways for democratic, just and sustainable transformations. This chapter focuses on two cases: a) on rescaling strategies played by indigenous organizations in Ecuador in relation to the central powers, to affirm the plurinational identity of the state; and b) on standard scales in natural conservation and creation of a natural park and kinship scale based on the notion of ancestral lands, tanindrazana, of the Tsimihety, main ethnic group in rural Northeast Madagascar. Politics of scales informs sustainability science to focus carefully on peoples’ institutions, territories, and territorialities as contingent levels of power interactions.