The Challenges of Scaling

We often define a small, manageable research topic, only to discover that its geographic or temporal reach stretches far beyond what we initially imagined. The search for either origins or consequences can lead into unexpected alleyways and dead ends. However, it can also lead to the research nightmare of a congested sixteen lane superhighway—full of scholarly lane changes and occasional flaming car crashes. When such scale threatens to wreck such a project, we need to intensify our efforts to identify the perceived logics and categories of the subjects and their contexts of meaning. This path requires a kind of conceptual creativity to work from hard-won micro perspectives back to concepts of scale without settling for conventional structural vocabularies.