Scale is a powerful concept, a lens that shapes how we perceive problems and solutions in common-pool resource governance. Yet, scale is often treated as a relatively stable and settled concept in commons scholarship. This paper reviews the origins and evolution of scalar thinking in commons scholarship in contrast with theories of scale in human geography and political ecology that focus on scale as a relational, power-laden process. Beginning with early writings on scale and the commons, this paper traces the emergence of an explicit scalar epistemology that orders both spatial and conceptual relationships vertically, as hierarchically nested levels. This approach to scale underpins a shared conceptualization of common-pool resource systems but inevitably illuminates certain questions and relationships while simultaneously obscuring others. Drawing on critiques of commonplace assumptions about scale from geography, we reread this dominant scalar framework for its analytic limitations and unintended effects. Drawing on examples from small-scale fisheries governance throughout, we contrast what is made visible in the commons through the standard approach to scale against an alternative, process-based approach to scale. We offer a typology of distinct dimensions and interrelated moments that produce scale in the commons coupled with new empirical and reflexive scale questions to be explored. We argue that engaging with theoretical advances on the production of scale in scholarship on the commons can generate needed attention to power and long-standing blind spots, enlivening our understanding of the dynamically scaled nature of the commons.

中文翻译：

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通过打破旧的假设和提出新的规模问题来重新思考公地的规模

规模是一个强大的概念，它塑造了我们如何看待公共池资源治理中的问题和解决方案。然而，在公地学界，规模往往被视为一个相对稳定和固定的概念。本文回顾了公共学术中标量思维的起源和演变，与人文地理学和政治生态学中的规模理论相比，这些理论侧重于将规模视为一个关系性的、充满权力的过程。从早期关于规模和公地的著作开始，本文追溯了一种明确的标量认识论的出现，该认识论将空间和概念关系垂直排序，作为分层嵌套的层次。这种规模化方法支持公共池资源系统的共享概念化，但不可避免地阐明了某些问题和关系，同时掩盖了其他问题和关系。借鉴对地理尺度的常见假设的批评，我们重新阅读了这个占主导地位的标量框架，因为它的分析局限性和意想不到的影响。借鉴自始至终小规模渔业治理的例子，我们将通过标准规模化方法在公地中可见的内容与另一种基于过程的规模化方法进行对比。我们提供了一种不同维度和相互关联的时刻的类型学，它们产生了公地规模，以及有待探索的新的经验性和反思性规模问题。我们认为，在公地学术研究中参与规模生产的理论进步可以引起对权力和长期存在的盲点的必要关注，从而使我们对公地动态规模性质的理解更加活跃。