Doreen Massey (geographer)

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This article is about the geographer. For the Labour Party politician, see Doreen Massey, Baroness Massey of Darwen.

Doreen Massey FRSA FBA (born 1944), is a contemporary British social scientist and geographer, and currently serving as 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 (Power Geometry), 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.

While Massey has argued for the importance of place, her position accords with those arguing against essentialised or static notions, 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' (1991, 1994).

[edit] Books

  • Massey, DB. 2007. World City.
  • Massey, DB (2005) For Space, London: Sage (ISBN 1412903610 & 1412903629)
  • 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. (ISBN 0713161086 and 0713161094 pbk)
  • Massey, DB & Batey, PWJ (Eds)(1977) "Alternative Frameworks for analysis", London:Pion (ISBN 085086061X)
  • 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