Doreen Massey, who has passed away at the age of 72, was a renowned scholar whose politically engaged books and essays had a tremendous impact on geographical scholarship. Her writing on space, place and power served as an inspiration to generations of geographers, creative artists, and trade unionists alike. Massey’s work called out the tendency to blame impoverished regions for their own poverty and put forth a progressive politics of place, where she believed that unequal spatial relations could – and should – be different.
Massey’s Spatial Divisions of Labour (1984) showed how a Marxian approach to regional development and capitalist production could be combined with a focus on specific places’ dynamic trajectories and cultures. Her essays in Space, Place, and Gender (1994) brought a feminist perspective to the reconsideration of power relations. Her "geometries of power" showed how different people and regions experienced globalisation.
Central to Massey’s contribution was her "relational" approach to the understanding of space and place. Rather than seeing space as a surface on which events were distributed, she believed that space had a much more lively and contested nature, consisting of many different trajectories of activity.
While Massey acknowledged the role of capital in shaping space, she viewed its impact as less definitive than other radical geographers, such as David Harvey. Massey’s political outlook was hopeful, positing that space was unfinished and in the process of being made. Therefore, it could be politicised and created to be more equitable. In her article A Global Sense of Place (1991), she argued that places still mattered and were being reworked in the process of globalisation, as opposed to being destroyed by it.
In her vivid discussion of Kilburn, the north-west London area where she resided, Massey exemplified how the district could not be understood effectively without bringing into play British imperialist history and nearly half the world. She described her time walking down the Kilburn High Road during the Gulf War of 1991, speaking with her newsagent, and silently chafing at having to sell the Sun. Massey viewed other areas such as the City of London as central to producing neoliberal globalisation. Her belief was that challenging a place’s current construction and role could be a significant political task. Massey’s engagement with movements like Occupy London and Take Back the City supported this perspective.
Massey’s involvement in support groups during the 1984-85 miners’ strike informed her understanding of how gender, sexuality, and race could transform the understanding of class. Collaborations in the early 1980s with her friends Stuart Hall, Chantal Mouffe, and Ernesto Laclau contributed to the ingenious political analysis associated with Marxism Today. In 1995, Massey co-founded the journal Soundings with Hall and Michael Rustin to develop an open left intellectual position.
Massey was born in Wythenshawe, Manchester, to proud parents Nancy and Jack, who left school in their early teens to work but wanted their daughters, Doreen and Hilary, to receive better educational opportunities. Nancy, who had to become the family’s breadwinner after her father’s early demise, worked as a secretary and then a personal assistant. Jack was a groundsman at the Northern Lawn Tennis Club, famously known for the excellence of its grass courts. Both parents continued their education at night school.
Doreen attended Manchester High School for Girls before studying geography at St. Hugh’s College, Oxford, where she secured a first-class degree and became more politically aware. Between 1968 and 1980, Massey worked at the Centre for Environmental Studies, researching urban and regional issues. She also studied for a master’s at the University of Pennsylvania (1971-72) during a sabbatical.
While at CES, Massey and Alejandrina Catalano authored Capital and Land (1978), studying capitalist land ownership in Britain. She worked with Richard Meegan and wrote about industrial restructuring and unemployment. In The Anatomy of Job Loss (1982), the authors remarked that their "interest in the subject matter" was significantly increased after Margaret Thatcher’s government closed CES.
In 1986, Massey became a research fellow at the London School of Economics and joined the socialist project of the Greater London Council. Together with Hilary Wainwright and Robin Murray, she focused on implementing an industrial strategy for the city. After the GLC’s abolition in 1986, she held meetings to maintain political momentum surrounding Ken Livingstone’s alternative left project. These gatherings in her Kilburn flat soon came to be known as the Ariel Road group.
Doreen Barbara Massey was a notable geographer, scholar and political activist whose impact on teaching and scholarship transcended the confines of the Open University. The courses she developed, such as The Shape of the World and Understanding Cities, and her involvement in editing Geography Matters enabled her to exert a powerful influence on education.
Massey’s work culminated in For Space, in which she encouraged spatial thinking, and World City, in which she explored the impact of London in shaping global and regional imbalances.
Although born in Manchester, Massey was an avid Liverpool FC supporter and spent many match days with her friend Hilary. She also enjoyed bird-watching, walking and stargazing and was a frequent visitor to the Lake District.
Massey won many accolades throughout her life, including the Prix Vautrin Lud, regarded as the geography equivalent of the Nobel Prize. Her most significant accomplishment was the contribution she made to political discourse, particularly with Hugo Chávez’s government, which adopted the geometries of power outlined in her work.
Massey spent a year in Nicaragua in the mid-80s, learning from the Sandinistas, and took part in debates on gender and economic policies with activists in South Africa. She was a vocal supporter of Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain and was thrilled at the prospect of the ideological and political hegemony of neoliberalism being fractured.
Massey co-edited the Kilburn Manifesto with Hall and Rustin, aimed at challenging the neoliberal consensus. Her work in this area will continue through Soundings and other projects in which she was involved.
Massey is survived by Hilary. She was born on 3 January 1944 and passed away on 11 March 2016.
