ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses scale in Chilean forest certification with a brief review of the literature on the politics of scale in geography and political ecology. It then refers in particular to a subject position that appears in a variety of important discourses in Chile, the pequeno propietario forestal or "small forest proprietor". The consumer side chain-of-custody exists to constrain the 'contamination" of the wood from uncertified sources, to "segregate" good wood from bad. The chapter also attempts to demonstrate, it is not only the small and rural actors who are beholden to scalar models of political action, the 'generification' issue and the problematic role of the state illustrate higher-order scalar complications that accompany the appearance of standardization as a regulatory form. The state is and is not present in Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification. Finally, the chapter suggests that those material qualities are constitutive of the scalar relationships that make up certification.
