A lot of emphasis is put on scaling-up successful initiatives – I am myself part of a Post-doc academy on “scaling sustainability” run by the Bosch Foundation. Moore et al. (2015) distinguish between scaling out (increasing numbers), scaling up (changing institutions, policy and law) and scaling deep (changing culture). All in all, scaling seems to be something that you “do”. But rarely is scale conceptualised in itself. Scale is often defined in relation to what is being observed. For example, geographical scales are defined in spatial terms. Temporal scales are defined by time measures. “Scaling” is about moving from one scale to another. I want to explore an alternative approach in this post: I will argue that scale is not something that you “do” but something that has a functional value and I will suggest that scales are defined by self-organisation principles.
So, what is scale?
Tim Allen in his work on hierarchy theory develops the concept of scale (Ahl and Allen 1996). Scale is defined both by the granularity with which something is observed and by the observer. Let’s take granularity first: a small scale is used when the level of granularity is high, as in when looking through a microscope. A large scale is used when the level of granularity is small, as in when looking through a telescope. Scaling, in this sense, is similar to “zooming” in and out. Granularity can be related to spatial and temporal definitions of scale: at high granularity, one may observe a household, a neighbourhood, and at low granularity a country, the planet.
How scales are defined is not random: one wouldn’t use a level of granularity of ¾ of a chair. Scales tend to coincide with the organisational levels of the system under observation – or the organisational levels at which the observer makes sense of what is being observed. This is why the observer is part of the definition of scale. I leave this point open: one can take a positivist approach to organisation as something intrinsic to the system, as in the self-organisation of complex systems, or a more constructivist approach that views organisation as something that the observer attributes to the system. What I will remark is that organisation is not a material property but has to do with information, as studied by cybernetics. For this reason, the definition of organisational levels can be interpreted both in positivist and in constructivist terms.
These levels of organisation correspond to functional units in the system. At the small scale, we analyse individuals because they constitute a functional unit in a household or in a society. Half an individual does not have a function. Going up in levels, we may follow different organisational units: for instance individual-household-community-people, or individual-company-economic sector-global economy. The same unit “individual” plays multiple functions, one can be both a mother and a factory worker. Scaling thus entails also selecting functionality.
Why does organisation matter? Because “scaling up” from this point of view means moving across different organisational levels and different functions. Going back to the idea of scaling sustainable projects, this means that projects that are scaled-up change function. Take the example of Gemüse Ackerdemie, which started as a small-scale initiative that aimed at making vegetable gardens in primary schools, as a means of teaching children about growing vegetables through a hands-on approach. The initiative was so successful that in time, the NGO started reproducing the programme in schools across Germany. As a small-scale initiative, the NGO workers dedicated their time to going to the schools, teaching the children and the teachers about planting, garden maintenance, pest control, etc. As a large-scale initiative, the work turned into a management and logistic challenge, and the focus shifted to calculating how many schools at the time could be included, mainstreaming the training through newsletters and information readily available on the website, and so on. Scaling changed the function of the NGO.
The bottom line is that scales provide an understanding of the function of organisation levels, which cannot be simply replicated and exported at will. The “action” od scaling may imply changing functions – not just of what is being scaled, but of the whole system. A characteristic of self-organising systems is that they adjust to changes. This is why some scholars refer to complex adaptive systems. Let’s see this with an example. One of the problems of scaling up crop-based biofuel production in the US and in the EU in the 2000s was that farmers that sold their crops for biofuels had access to subsidies, since biofuels were (and still are to some extent) seen as part of the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Subsidies created an incentive for farmers to produce more fuel crops and less food crops, creating a competition between food and fuels. The FAO calculated that world food prices rose by 40% during 2007. This led Peter Brabeck-Letmathe to declare in 2008, “If as predicted we look to use biofuels to satisfy twenty percent of the growing demand for oil products, there will be nothing left to eat” (Tigunova, Shulga, and Blume 2013). The story of biofuels illustrates how scaling can alter functions throughout the system.
What matters for sustainability governance is, then, to understand scale as part of what is being sustained. From this point of view, does it make sense to establish targets for conservation, emission reductions, renewable energies, and so on, without taking into account how the system may adapt to the re-scaling? Rather than defining scales of sustainability by replicating or enlarging sustainable practices, I suggest that it may make more sense to understand at which scale sustainable functions may emerge.
.
References
Ahl, Valerie, and Timothy F H Allen. 1996. Hierarchy Theory: A Vision, Vocabulary, and Epistemology. New York: Columbia University Press.
Moore, Michele-lee, Darcy Riddell, and Dana Vocisano. 2015. “Scaling Out, Scaling Up, Scaling Deep * Social Innovation.” The Journal of Corporate Citizenship, no. 58: 67–84.
Tigunova, O. A., S. M. Shulga, and Y. B. Blume. 2013. “Biobutanol as an Alternative Type of Fuel.” Cytology and Genetics 47 (6): 366–82. https://doi.org/10.3103/S0095452713060042.
0 Comments