Human geography without scale

subjective–objective or chaotic–orderly. 14 This ready-made character of scale is well suited for adherents of critical realism, since it too sports a hierarchically organized set of ontological building blocks (of structures, mechanisms and events; see Sayer 1992, 141, 237). Realism’s dualisms and scalar hierarchies often intertwine, again notwithstanding Sayer’s cautionary remarks (1991; also Cox and Mair 1989). 15 There are a number of popular and academic authors smitten with the notion of unfettered flows. As should be clear from what follows, we strongly distance ourselves from both, including Thomas Friedman, whose ethnocentric book The World is Flat (2005) is but the latest. Lest we be misinterpreted, let us state unequivocally: The world is not flat. 16 This resonates with Neil Smith’s (1996) admonishment of Castells’s ‘spaces of flows’, as discussed earlier. Smith stresses both fixity and fluidity as constitutive elements of capitalism. Also see Woodward