Doreen Massey (geographer)

{{short description|British social scientist and geographer (b.1944)}}

{{Infobox scientist

|name = Doreen Massey

|honorific_suffix = {{post-nominals|country=GBR|FRSA|FBA|FAcSS|size=100%}}

|image = Doreen Massey.jpg

|birth_name = Doreen Barbara Massey

|birth_date = {{birth date|1944|1|3|df=y}}

|birth_place = Manchester, England

|death_date = {{Death date and age|2016|3|11|1944|1|3|df=y}}

|death_place = Kilburn, London, England

|citizenship = British

|fields = Economic and social geography

|alma_mater = University of Oxford
University of Pennsylvania

|awards = Victoria Medal (1994)
Prix Vautrin Lud (1998)

}}

Doreen Barbara Massey {{post-nominals|country=GBR|FRSA|FBA|FAcSS}} (3 January 1944 – 11 March 2016) was a British social scientist and geographer.{{Cite web|last=Lee|first=Roger|title=Doreen Barbara Massey 3 January 1944 – 11 March 2016 elected Fellow of the British Academy 2002|url=https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/documents/982/Memoirs_17-10_Massey.pdf|url-status=live|website=www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200706094704/https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/documents/982/Memoirs_17-10_Massey.pdf |archive-date=6 July 2020}} She specialized in Marxist geography, feminist geography, and cultural geography, as well as other topics. She was Professor of Geography at the Open University.{{cite web|last=Open University|title=Prof Doreen Massey – Profile|url=http://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/staff/people-profile.php?name=Doreen_Massey|access-date=16 June 2008}}

Career

Massey was born in Manchester, England, and spent most of her childhood in Wythenshawe, living on a council estate.{{cite web |url=http://www.geographical.co.uk/Magazine/People/Doreen_Massey_-_Dec_09.html |title=Magazine / Geographical |website=www.geographical.co.uk |access-date=14 March 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140323050724/http://www.geographical.co.uk/Magazine/People/Doreen_Massey_-_Dec_09.html |archive-date=23 March 2014 |url-status=dead}} She studied at Oxford University{{Cite web|last=Staff|date=2016-03-17|title=In Memoriam: Doreen Massey|url=http://news.aag.org/2016/03/in-memoriam-doreen-massey/|access-date=2021-05-24|website=AAG Newsletter|language=en-US|archive-date=24 May 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210524081631/http://news.aag.org/2016/03/in-memoriam-doreen-massey/|url-status=dead}} and later at the University of Pennsylvania, receiving a master's degree in Regional Science.

She then began her career at a thinktank: the Centre for Environmental Studies (CES) in London. CES contained several key analysts of the contemporary British economy. There, Massey established a working partnership with Richard Meegan, among others. When CES closed down she then became Professor of Geography at the Open University.{{cite web|title=Staff Profile Prof Doreen Massey|url=http://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/staff/people-profile.php?name=Doreen_Massey|access-date=29 March 2013}}

Massey retired in 2009 but remained a frequent media commentator, particularly on industry and regional trends. As Professor Emerita at the Open University she continued her speaking engagements and involvement in educational TV programmes and books.{{cite web|url=http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/tributes-after-death-geographer-acclaimed-11033331|title=Tributes after the death of geographer and acclaimed social scientist Professor Doreen Massey|author=Paul Britton|date=13 March 2016|work=men}}

Doreen Massey's main fields of study were globalisation, regional uneven development, cities, and the reconceptualisation of place. Although associated with an analysis of contemporary western capitalist society, she also worked in Nicaragua, South Africa and Venezuela.

Her work on space, place and power has been highly influential within a range of related disciplines and research fields.

Theories

=Economic geography=

Massey's early work at CES established the basis for her spatial divisions of labour theory (Power Geometry), that social inequalities were generated by the unevenness of the capitalist economy, creating stark divisions between rich and poor regions and between social classes. "Space matters" for poverty, welfare and wealth.{{Cite web|title=Doreen Massey obituary |date=27 March 2016 |url=https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/mar/27/doreen-massey-obituary |last=Featherstone |first=David |newspaper=The Guardian |language=en}}

Over the years this theory has been refined and extended, with space and spatial relationships remaining central to her account of contemporary society.

=Geography of gender=

As a geographer Massey (1994,{{Cite book |last=Massey |first=D.B. |title=Space, place, and gender |publisher=University of Minnesota Press |year=1994 |location=US}} 1999{{Cite book |last=Massey, D., Allen, J. and Sarre, P., 1999. |first=D. |title=Human geography today |publisher=e-book |year=1999 |location=online}}) brought the impact of space and place on gendered experiences into the theoretical context of describing spatial ‘values’{{Cite thesis |last=Bissett Scott |first=S.J. |url=https://arro.anglia.ac.uk/id/eprint/703786/ |title='Spatial Justice': Towards a values-led framework of regeneration outcomes in UK planning |publisher=Anglia Ruskin University |year=2018 |location=UK |pages=19|type=doctoral}} in contemporary society, thus giving an added dimension, that of social grouping, of when justice is fair as well as equally accessed in space and place. She developed the concepts aired earlier by Bowlby et al{{Cite journal |last=Bowlby, S., Lewis, J., McDowell, L. and Foord, J. |first=S. |date=1989 |title=The geography of gender |journal=New Models in Geography: The Political Economy Perspective |volume=2 |pages=157–175}} on gender-shaped geography. On the editorial board of SEEDS, Massey furthered the understanding of economic geography and related impacts on women's lives as a constant theme throughout the practice-based regional reports, in a series edited by Robin Murray at S.E.E.D.S.{{Cite web |title=South East Economic Development Strategy (SEEDS) |url=https://robinmurray.co.uk/seeds |website=robinmurray.co.uk}}

Sense of place

While Massey has argued for the importance of place, her position accords with those arguing against essentialised or static notions,Dovey, Kim: Becoming Places, Routledge, 2010 where:

places do not have single identities but multiple ones.
places are not frozen in time, they are processes.
places are not enclosures with a clear inside and outside.

Massey used the example of Kilburn High Road in north-west London to exemplify what she termed a "progressive" or "global" sense of place, in the essay "A Global Sense of Place".{{cite journal

| last = Massey | first = Doreen

| title = A Global Sense of Place

| journal = Marxism Today

| volume = 38

| date = 24 June 1991

| url = http://www.amielandmelburn.org.uk/collections/mt/index_frame.htm}}

In a Podcast interview with Social Science Space Massey talks about the idea of physical space being alive: "A lot of what I've been trying to do over the all too many years when I’ve been writing about space is to bring space alive, to dynamize it and to make it relevant, to emphasize how important space is in the lives in which we live. Most obviously I would say that space is not a flat surface across which we walk; Raymond Williams talked about this: you’re taking a train across the landscape – you’re not traveling across a dead flat surface that is space: you’re cutting across myriad stories going on. So instead of space being this flat surface it's like a pincushion of a million stories: if you stop at any point in that walk there will be a house with a story. Raymond Williams spoke about looking out of a train window and there was this woman clearing the grate, and he speeds on and forever in his mind she’s stuck in that moment. But actually, of course, that woman is in the middle of doing something, it’s a story. Maybe she's going away tomorrow to see her sister, but really before she goes she really must clean that grate out because she’s been meaning to do it for ages. So I want to see space as a cut through the myriad stories in which we are all living at any one moment. Space and time become intimately connected."{{YouTube|Quj4tjbTPxw|Doreen Massey on Space_Social Science Bites}}

Awards and honours

2014 - Presidential Achievement Award of the Association of American Geographers
2013 - Honorary Doctorate, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, University of Zurich
2012 - Honorary Doctorate, Harokopio University, Athens
2010 - Hon DSc (Econ), Queen Mary University of London
2009 - Honorary Doctorate of Letters, University of Glasgow
2006 - Honorary DLitt, National University of Ireland
2006 - Honorary Doctorate of Science awarded by the University of Edinburgh
2003 - Centenary Medal of Royal Scottish Geographical Society
2003 - Anders Retzius Medal in Gold, awarded by the Swedish Society of Anthropologists and Geographers
2002 - Fellow, British Academy
2001 - Honorary Fellow, St. Hugh's College, University of Oxford
2000 - Fellow, Royal Society of Arts
1999 - Fellow, Academy of Social Sciences
1998 - Prix Vautrin Lud ('Nobel de Géographie')
1994 - Victoria Medal of the Royal Geographical Society

♯ Doreen Massey declined the award of an Order of the British Empire (OBE)

Books

Cordey-Hayes, M., & D. B. Massey (1970), An operational urban development model of Cheshire. London: Centre for Environmental Studies.
Massey, D. B. (1971), The basic: service categorisation in planning London: Centre for Environmental Studies.
Massey, D. B. (1974), Towards a critique of industrial location theory London: Centre for Environmental Studies.
Massey, D. B., & P. W. J. Batey (eds)(1977), "Alternative Frameworks for analysis", London: Pion ({{ISBN|085086061X}}).
Massey, D. B., & A. Catalano (1978), Capital and land: Landownership by capital in Great Britain. London: Edward Arnold ({{ISBN|0713161086}} and 0713161094 pbk).
Massey, D. B., & R. A. Meegan (1979), The geography of industrial reorganisation: The spatial effects of the restructuring of the electrical engineering sector under the industrial reorganisation corporation. Oxford and New York: Pergamon Press.
Massey, D. B., & R. A. Meegan (1982), The anatomy of job loss: The how, why, and where of employment decline. London and New York: Methuen.
Massey, D. B. (1984), Spatial divisions of labour: Social structures and the geography of production. New York: Methuen.
Massey, D. B. (1987), Nicaragua. Milton Keynes, England and Philadelphia: Open University Press.
Massey, D. B. (1988), Global restructuring, local responses. Atwood lecture. Worcester, Mass.: Graduate School of Geography, Clark University.
Ginwala, F., M. Mackintosh & D. B. Massey (1991), Gender and economic policy in a democratic South Africa. Milton Keynes, UK: Development Policy and Practice, Technology Faculty, Open University.
Massey, D. B. (1994), Space, place, and gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.{{Cite book |last=Massey |first=D.B. |title=Space, place, and gender |publisher=University of Minnesota Press |year=1994 |location=US}} [https://www.perlego.com/book/1535683/space-place-and-gender-pdf Perlego Books]
Massey, D. B. (1995), [https://books.google.com/books?id=X_uVogLRjQsC Spatial divisions of labor: Social structures and the geography of production], 2nd edition. New York: Routledge.
Hall, S., Massey, D. B., & M. Rustin (1997), The next ten years. London: Soundings.
Allen, J., D. B. Massey, A. Cochrane (1998), Rethinking the region. New York: Routledge.
Massey, D. B (2005), For Space, London: Sage ({{ISBN|1412903610}} & {{ISBN|1412903629}}).
Massey, D. B. (2007), World City, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Massey, D. B. (2010), World City, with new Preface: "After the Crash", July 2010. Cambridge: Polity Press.