Place and region: looking through the prism of scale Anssi Paasi Department of Geography, Box 3000, 90014 University of Oulu, Finland I Introduction Perhaps more visibly than any other category, scale has entered the geographical discourse since the 1980s and geographers have been ready to add it to such key words as space, place or region (Herod, 2003; Howitt, 2003). The current discourse on scale is part of an effort to make sense of the asymmetries, conflicts and confronta- tions of the globalizing world (Herod et al., 1998; Sheppard, 2002), characterized by changes in capitalist development, communication, mobility, governance/regulation and knowledge frameworks (Scholte, 2000). Political and economic relations and activities are mediated (and resisted) by culture, and by identities manifesting them- selves in multiscale networks of development and environmental and cultural rights organizations, for instance (Clark, 2002; Stevenson, 2003; Perreault, 2003). While it would be naı ¨ve to deny the existence and the institutionalized – but contextual and transforming – roles of bounded arenas such as the state/local state as key scales in social practice/discourse and ideology, the given ontological status of scales has now been questioned (Marston, 2000; Brenner, 1998; 1999; 2001; Howitt, 2003). Simi- larly, sociologists have challenged the linear metaphor of scale that has guided such notions as society/nation state, democracy and citizenship for a long time, and have chosen to accentuate connections (Urry, 2003). Geographers have suggested that the increasing interconnection and interdependence between places does not mark ‘the end but the beginning of geography’ (Castree, 2003). Region and place are implied but rarely explicitly reflected in the scale debate, but previous tendencies force us to reflect not only on the meanings of scale but also on its relations to region/place. This report will look at how current interpretations of scale as a social construct contribute to and challenge the interpretations of region and place, thus hopefully complementing the recent profound reviews of the notion of scale (Marston, 2000; Brenner, 2001; Howitt, 2003). I will first briefly outline the contribution of scale to geographical knowledge and will then look at how scale, region and place are related. # Arnold 2004 10.1191/0309132504ph502pr Progress in Human Geography 28,4 (2004) pp. 536–546