Doreen Massey

• Takes a "relational" approach to understanding space and place; theorises space in a 'lively and contested' way as a constellation of different trajectories of activity.
• Spatial Divisions of Labour (1984):

  • a way of understanding uneven regional development
• Space, Place and Gender (1994):

  • feminist perspective of how processes are experienced
  • "geometries of power"
• A Global Sense of Place (1991):

  • places are being reworked through processes of globalisation rather than eroded by it
• What does Doreen Massey suggest we see places as?

  sets of social relations linked into networks that cross space and scale
• Under globalisation, spatial relations are becoming more stretched out.
• We can now often be more connected to people who are geographically distant than those who live down the street from us.
• In this era, things are speeding up and spreading out (everything is fast and we travel more, so are more cultured).
• What does Doreen Massey call the time that we live in?

  • 'the annihilation of space by time' and 'time-space compression'
  • (we live in an era where technology shrinks distances and speeds up communication, like a global village where a message travels faster than a plane can fly)
• What does Doreen Massey think the result of globalisation is?

  Increasing uncertainty about what we mean by 'places' and how we relate to them
• What does time-space compression refer to?

  The movement and communication across space, to geographical stretching-out of social relations, and to our experience of all of this
• It is ___ and ____ which determine our experience of space

  capitalism and developments
• What is the power geometry of time-space compression?

  • different social groups and different individuals are placed in distinct ways in relation to these flows and interconnections
  • power in relation to flows and movement
  • e.g. illustrates how various social groups experience globalisation differently, like how some people ride a fast train while others are stuck in traffic, affecting their access to resources and opportunities
• What can a sense of place provide?

  Rootedness can provide a sense of stability and a source of unproblematic identity
• What are place and locality foci for?

  a form of romanticised escapism from the real business of the world
• What are Doreen Massey's progressive concepts of place?

  • place is not static
  • places do not have to have boundaries in the sense of decisions which frame enclosures
  • places do not have single, unique identities
  • they are full of internal conflicts
  • importance of uniqueness of a place
  • place is continually reproduced
• What does Doreen Massey define a sense of place as being constructed by?

  • linking that place to places beyond: a progressive sense of place recognises that without being threatened by it
  • a sense of place grows by connecting it to other locations, like how a tree's roots spread out to nourish and strengthen its trunk without losing its identity
• What notion does Doreen Massey discuss?

  A progressive sense of place
• What does time-space compression result from?

  • capitalism and internationalisation
  • therefore, it is time, space, and money which make the world go round