Space, Place, and Gender

by Doreen Massey

This volume brings together Doreen Massey's key writings on three areas central to a range of disciplines: space and social relations; place and identity; and space, place and gender. It traces the development of ideas about the social nature of space and place and the relation of both to issues of gender and debates within feminism. Massey suggests that it is debates in these areas which have been crucial in bringing geography to the centre of social-science thinking in recent years, and this book includes writings that have been fundamental to that process.

Genres: Geography, Feminism, Nonfiction, Academic, Gender, Theory, Anthropology

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

From Wikipedia: Doreen Barbara Massey FRSA FBA FAcSS (3 January 1944 – 11 March 2016) was a British social scientist and geographer, working among others on topics involving Marxist geography, feminist geography, and cultural geography. Her work on space, place and power has been highly influential within a range of related disciplines and research fields. She served as Emeritus Professor of Geography at the Open University.

Massey was born in Manchester and spent most of her childhood in Wythenshawe, a large council estate. She studied at Oxford and later did a Masters in Regional Science at the University of Pennsylvania, beginning her career with a thinktank, the Centre for Environmental Studies (CES) in London. CES contained several key analysts of the contemporary British economy, and Massey established a working partnership with Richard Meegan, among others. CES was closed down and she moved into academia at the Open University.

Massey retired in 2009 but remained a frequent media commentator, particularly on industry and regional trends. In her role as Emeritus Professor at the OU she continued her speaking engagements and involvement in educational TV programmes and books.

Reviews

[Andrew]

Massey's vision of what geography is and can be is terribly close to my own, so I didn't need much persuading. She peels away at space and time, makes bold, brilliant statements, and meanwhile I'm like "right on, keep droppin them truth bombs, you my GIRL, Doreen!"

My only problem comes toward the end, in some of her gender analysis. She is awfully willing to essentialize gender categories in a slightly uncomfortable way. Rather than examining gender relations in the inclusive, plain-spoken, sensible way she examines space, she makes bold, groundless claims about what a man is and what a woman is. I understand that categories and identities like that are politically useful, and I understand why she's pissed off about implicit sexism (as she rightly should be), but claiming that enjoying a painting of a female nude is tantamount to masochism seems neither politically useful nor correct.

[annahuk]

I read the entire thing

[Leonardo]

Doreen Massey argumenta explícitamente por una política del lugar en la que el lugar sea concebido no como cercado sino abierto y poroso a los fluidos de alrededor, en Space, Place and Gender (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), en particular, p. 5. Podemos discutir, sin embargo, que la noción de un lugar sin límites vacía totalmente de contenido al concepto. Para una excelente revisión de la literatura y una concepción alternativa sobre lugar, ver Arif Dirlik, “Place-based Imagination: Globalism and the Politics of Place”, manuscrito sin publicar.


Imperio Pág.40

[Tate Lockwood-Roden · Rating 5 out of 5]

doreen you are the goat of geography

[Alina]

Read this in one day. I feel like my brain is about to explode, but like... in a good way.

[Sofia · Rating 5 out of 5]

My new favorite.

[Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

per la tesi, molt lúcid

[Mansor Pooyan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The interesting thing about this book is the fact that it assesses relationships with the `Other` sex. This interplay between one's inner life and the wishes of any relationship with the other sex, constitutes the subject matter of any therotical anasysis of gender identity. This book has the effect of shedding light on our own pesonal daily life in meaning making activities. The whole cotextualisation which gives life to self-esteem depends upon the sex/ gender characteristics ascribed at chidhood. I believe to a great extent the formation of our personal traits depend on the one's own awareness of socio-cultural situations in space and time.

[Malcolm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most of these essays, in their original forms, are form the 1980s when massey was one of the fore-runners of a materialist feminist geography. She weaves together concerns with place and space to build an intriguing and exciting set of propostions about relations between a range of Others to suggest a set of ways that link class and place and gender, all centred around the notion of place and its related identities as open and contested. In this she challenges ideas of fixed identities (which may seem old hat now but at the time the challenge to essentialist ideas of identity was provocative). What is more, they have remained useful over the years.

[Rook · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's not so much that I thought this book wasn't well-constructed. Massey makes some important addendums and criticisms to the literature on social geographical theory (though I think she herself makes the mistake of which she accuses Harvey and Soja by leaving gender considerations largely out of the first two-thirds of the book). However, I just didn't enjoy the book. Coming from a sociological perspective, I didn't see much to fascinate or surprise me.

[mahatmanto · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is the most expensive used-book i've ever bought.
within this collection of essays the author -doreen massey- traces the development of ideas about the social nature of space and place and the relation of both to issues of gender and discussions within feminism.
mumet!

[Candy Wood]

The last two sections of the book are particularly applicable to literary study, with questions about postmodernism and ways of considering place and gender without essentializing--"gendered geography."

[Paul Hoehn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although the specifics of this book often dealt with topics that were of little interest to me, Massey's conception of space/the spatial is exciting and *~*~full of potential~*~*

[Shaun Edmonds · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit repetitious in places, but makes some fantastic points and is grounded in real world examples.