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  • Essay / Nature of BLM as a global social movement

    Peter Taylor (1982), Neil Smith (1993) and Sally Marston (2000) all take different approaches to scale and the methods by which scale can be applied as a political strategy. While Taylor (1982) focuses on a more conventional, economics-centered, three-pronged approach to political geography, Smith (1993) opts for a more complex, multi-level perspective. Marston's (2000) perspective is social-centered and emphasizes the role of social interactions in founding geographic scales. This essay will discuss how these perspectives illuminate the use of scale in relation to the origins, significance, and impacts of the contemporary and very current Black Lives Matter movement. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Taylor (1982) uses scale to organize the subject when it comes to political geography. The materialist approach to Taylor's (1982) framework places the global economy, in terms of global capital accumulation, as the starting point for the organization of political geographies. In doing so, Taylor (1982) suggests that studies at the national and urban scale should be contextualized within a comprehensive global perspective. Following the global scale, Taylor (1982) uses the national scale to represent independent nation states that exist on a global scale. Finally, he identifies the urban scale as that of the community and daily life. In Taylor's (1982) framework, the national scale plays an important intermediary role in helping to mediate between the global and urban scales. Furthermore, Taylor (1982) believes that the national scale obscures activities that take place on both the global and urban scales and that his study therefore reveals connections between the three scales. He describes the global scale as the scale of reality, the national scale as the scale of ideology, and the urban scale as the scale of experience. Each scale is linked to the notion of reality allowing the discovery of ideology (referring to the treatment of each nation-state on the global scale of reality) and the scale of ideology then lends itself to the scale of experience on a daily level. argued that Smith's perspective on scale is more multidimensional and in-depth than Taylor's, because it compromises multiple scales. The scale of the body defines the locus of personal identity while the scale of the home provides the specialization of experiences and social activities in which the scale of the body is contextualized. The community scale is the scale at which social reproduction occurs; the urban scale is the scale at which employment controls the area over which home-work travel takes place while the region is the scale at which economic production takes place. Smith's perspective on the national scale can be compared to Taylor's, as the dominant scale of state power. Politically, this translates to lower spatial scales being controlled by the state on a national scale, meaning that challenges to oppression typically emanate from these lower spatial scales. Finally, Smith's global scale refers to activities resulting from the circulation of capital and thus joins Taylor's economy-centered scaling framework. However, Smith's recognition of the multi-scale nature of social processes challenges Taylor's view that scale can be used organizationally. In contrast to Taylor's organizational perspective, Marston (2000) believes that scale is "an outcomecontingent on the tensions that exist between the forces and practices of human agents. Marston (2000) takes a constructionist approach to scale focusing on the role of social interactions in establishing geographic scales. As part of this constructionist vision, Marston (2000) opts for a relational view of scale, in agreement with Howitt (1998) who believed in understanding scale as a relational element between place, space and space.environment. Collectively, Marston's approach to scale is structuralist but flexible, as demonstrated by his agreement with Staeheli (1994). Staeheli (1994) describes how political opposition movements cross boundaries to benefit from resources at one scale, allowing them to “overcome constraints encountered at different scales in the same way that more powerful actors can do.” In conclusion, Marston's perspective on scale differs from that of Taylor (1982), as she believes that examining the subdivision of social problems and society by scales reveals the complexity of stories and how the most Much of the scale occurs through organizational efforts. Furthermore, Marston's (2000) perspective can be compared to that of Smith (1993) through the mutual appreciation of the multi-scale nature of social processes and interactions. Similarly, the perspectives of Taylor (1983), Smith (1993), and Marston (2000) all shed light on how scale is used in the contemporary Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. Given that more than 2 billion people around the world access social media every day, there is no doubt that the inherent nature of social media has played a vital role in the expansion of the BLM movement. The movement was launched in response to the senseless shooting of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old African American man, in February 2012, and the resulting acquittal of his killer George Zimmerman (Bell et al 2013). Alicia Garza (2014), who founded the movement alongside Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, detailed how Travyon Martin was “posthumously tried for his own murder.” The origins of the movement align with Smith's (1993) perspective on scale, in that Travyon Martin's oppression and suffering, on the scale of his body in terms of personal identity, led to a protest that spread across urban, regional, national areas. , and on a global scale. This global outcry results from the ability of users to create and share content on social networks, allowing wide dissemination of information in a proportionately short period of time, as well as the collection of information under the hashtag # BlackLivesMatters. Marston's (2000) structuralist but flexible approach The large-scale approach highlights the use of broad publicity to promote BLM movements. The use of social media to spread information about racial oppression continues to generate monetary donations in the form of GoFundMe pages. Black Lives Matter UK has raised over £1.2 million in donations which have been donated to local funds to tackle racism in communities, city-wide. In addition, the United Friends and Families campaign received £45,000 to create a People's Court for Deaths in Custody. This is directly related to Marston's (2000) agreement with Staeheli (1994), in that BLM benefits from the economic resources created by social media campaigns on a global scale. This allows the movement to "overcome constraints faced at different scales in the same way that more powerful actors can", such as lack of funding for prosecutions.