ABSTRACT
The nation is just one of the many different scales at which we define our identity and become engaged in political action. Below the level of the nation there are regions, states, provinces, counties, cities, towns, municipalities, parishes, neighbourhoods – many different places in which and through which politics occurs. This chapter examines how place provides a context for the formation of political identities and the identification of political interests, how political activity can be organised and mobilised around place, and how power within place is structured and exercised. In doing so, however, we seek to avoid two common traps that have sometimes ensnared political geographers in the past. First, we must be careful not to overstate the causal significance of place, but instead
recognise that every place is constituted through wider social, economic and political processes. Second, in choosing to think about ‘place’ at a local scale – that is, to think about places as localities (see Box 6.1) – we must also recognise that ‘the local scale’ cannot be taken as a given entity but is socially constructed and that as such there is a politics of scale. These two arguments are discussed in more detail below before the chapter moves on to look at aspects of place-based community politics and power.
