Scaling knowledge: towards a critical geography of critical geographies Lawrence D. Berg Department of Geography, Okanagan University College, 7000 College Way, Vernon, BC, Canada V1B 2N5 Received 4 December 2002; received in revised form 25 November 2003 Abstract This paper provides an analysis of the scale politics involved in the production of social-scientific geographic knowledge. I argue that critical Geographers need to acknowledge that ideas do not circulate unfettered or limited solely by their intellectual value. Instead, we must understand that some ideas are ‘attached’ intimately to the places in which they originate while others circulate freely without attachment to specific places. Through such simple (dis)locations, geographic ideas get inserted into spaces of aca- demic knowledge production that are shot through with scale politics. Ironically, such scalar processes produce a simple, trans- parent, abstract and hierarchical space of knowledge production that elides the complex spatial relations that we as geographers are supposed to be so interested in understanding. Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Anglo-American hegemony; Cultural politics; Geographic knowledges; Geographic scale; Hierarchical space 1. Introduction In this paper, I outline a brief discussion of the scaling of knowledge that literally and metaphorically takes place through hegemonic Anglo-Americanism working in and through critical geography. This paper has been difficult to write, but not because there is too little to say about the issues I want to canvass. Rather, my difficulties arise partly because there is so much to say about Anglo-American hegemony and how this serves to scale places and knowledge, and thereby effect hier- archical spaces in critical geography. It was difficult to choose only those few issues that I would be able to discuss in the space I have available to me in this brief essay. For those of us who live and work in academic settings outside the UK or USA (or those who have done so in the past), Anglo-American hegemony is an all-too-real and often obvious phenomenon that we must work with––or more properly, around––on a daily basis. Of course, even though it is obvious to many of us who often must push against its invisible boundaries, it has a normative character for many critical geographers. It is that taken-for-grantedness that makes it even more difficult to contest. My difficulties in writing this paper also arise because of my own complex and contradictory positioning in the Academy. I am, for example, the only white male of this group of authors whose works make up this special issue to discuss and analyse some of the issues arising in the spaces of critical geography. One does not need to draw on an essentialist understanding of ‘race’ or gender in order to acknowledge the problematic spaces of whiteness and masculinism that thus com- pr(om)ise my writing. Geography is perhaps one of the whitest (Kobayashi and Peake, 2000; Gilmore, 2002) and most masculinist of all social sciences (Rose, 1993; Berg, 2002). Likewise, while I used to live and write in the Southern Hemisphere, I now live in Canada. While Canada is certainly not the same as the US or UK, it is certainly less ‘marginal’ than other locations. While I must be careful here to not map simple geographies of centres and margins onto very general academic spaces, it is nonetheless important to acknowledge the very sig- nificant geographies of power that constitute academic knowledge production. As a product of the often taken- for-granted social relations that I inhabit, my own work is sometimes riddled with the contradictions of my rela- tively privileged position in academe and my inability to E-mail address: lberg@okanagan.bc.ca (L.D. Berg). 0016-7185/$ - see front matter Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2004.01.005 Geoforum 35 (2004) 553–558 www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum