Doreen Massey (geographer)

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Doreen Massey FRSA FBA (b. 1944), is a contemporary British social scientist and geographer, and currently Professor of geography at the Open University. Massey was born in Manchester and studied at Oxford and Philadelphia, 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 OU. After a distinguished career, she won the Prix Vautrin Lud (the ‘Nobel de Géographie’) in 1998.

Doreen Massey is a relatively frequent media commentator, particularly on industry and regional trends, and in her role as Professor at the OU she is involved in several educational TV programmes and books.

[edit] Outline of her arguments

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

Her early work at CES established the basis for her 'spatial divisions of labour' theory, that social inequalities were generated by the uneveness of the capitalist economy, creating stark divisions between rich and poor regions and between social classes. 'Space matters' for poverty, welfare and wealth. Over the years this theory has been refined and extended, with space and spatial relationships remaining central to her account of contemporary society.

Concerning place-based identities, she is known to reject reactionary definitions. Instead, she argues that :

  • 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.

[edit] Books

  • Massey, DB. 2007. World City.
  • Massey, DB. 2005. For Space. Sage.
  • Allen, J., Massey, DB, Cochrane, A. 1998. Rethinking the region. New York: Routledge.
  • Hall, S, Massey, DB, & Rustin, M. 1997. The next ten years. London: Soundings.
  • Massey, DB. 1995. Spatial divisions of labor: Social structures and the geography of production 2nd edition. New York: Routledge.
  • Massey, DB. 1994. Space, place, and gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  • Ginwala, F, Mackintosh, M, & Massey, DB. 1991. Gender and economic policy in a democratic South Africa. Milton Keynes, U.K.: Development Policy and Practice, Technology Faculty, Open University.
  • Massey, DB. 1988. Global restructuring, local responses. Atwwod lecture. Worcester, Mass.: Graduate School of Geography, Clark University.
  • Massey, DB. 1987. Nicaragua. Milton Keynes, England and Philadelphia: Open University Press.
  • Massey, DB. 1984. Spatial divisions of labor: Social structures and the geography of production. New York: Methuen.
  • Massey, DB. & Meegan, RA. 1982. The anatomy of job loss: The how, why, and where of employment decline. London and New York: Methuen.
  • Massey, DB. & Meegan, RA. 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, DB. & Catalano, A. 1978. Capital and land: Landownership by capital in Great Britain. London: Edward Arnold.
  • Massey, DB. 1974. Towards a critique of industrial location theory London: Centre for Environmental Studies.
  • Massey, DB. 1971. The basic: service categorisation in planning London: Centre for Environmental Studies.
  • Cordey-Hayes, M. & Massey, DB. 1970. An operational urban development model of Cheshire. London: Centre for Environmental Studies.


[edit] External links