Open Access

Erik Swyngedouw

• The example of Spain illustrates how the production of socio-ecological scales is centred on the social transformation of nature and the construction of socio-ecological and political-ecological scalar gestalts. Concrete geographies, with choreographies of uneven and shifting social power relations, are etched into these ecological, social, political or institutional scalar configurations. These processes are infused with contested and contestable strategies of individuals and social groups, who mobilise spatial scales as part of struggles for control and empowerment, and contest the power geometries of extant scalar gestalts. Needless to say, the mobilisation of scale, the occupation of geographical scale, and the production of scale are central moments in such processes of socio-spatial change. Struggling for the command of scale, or strategizing around excluding particular groups from the performative capabilities of certain scales, shapes social processes, defines relative empowerment and disempowerment and gives rise to very specific socio-spatial relations.
• Soziale Machtverhältnisse, die den ökologischen, sozialen, politischen und institutionellen skalaren Konfigurationen eingeschrieben sind, werden am Beispiel Spaniens gezeigt.