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Cohen, A. & L. Harris (2014). Performing Scale: Watersheds as “Natural” Governance Units in the Canadian Context. In: M.R. Glass & R. Rose-Redwood, Eds (2014) Perfomativity, Politics, and the Production of Social Space. New York and London: Routledge

Abstract: This chapter is concerned with the performativity of scale—that is, the citational practices through which scale effects are produced  While debates related to performativity are increasingly familiar across the social sciences, and have increasingly been taken up with respect to performativities of space, as well as performativities of scale,, there are relatively few examples that link this approach to nature–society questions.  This chapter examines the performativity of scale as central to theconstruction of new governance scales—in this case, watersheds. Drawing on case study material of rescaled water governance in Canada, we explore the practices through which watersheds are produced as “natural” and ontologically given, and argue that this has two linked effects. First, these practices increasingly establish watershed governance as a largely technical exercise (the “technical effect”). Second, scalar performativities related to watersheds serve to entrench a focus on activities and practices that are linked with “nature” rather than focusing on human activities important for water governance (we refer to this as the “nature–culture binary effect”).