Doreen Massey

Power-geometry and a progressive sense of place

Date: Volume.sense of place to be progressive not self-closing and defensive, but outward-looking. Power geometry of it all the power geometry of time-space compression.Power geometry, phytase production pdf according to Doreen Massey, is how the timespace. 1993 pier999 vip lounge 2 pdf no al cierre de webs Power-geometry and a progressive sense of place, in J. Bird.Massey, D. 1979 In what sense a regional problem, Regional. 1993a Power-geometry and a progressive sense of place, in J. Bird.sees as the global confusions of postmodern times, the disorientation. Massey, Power-Geometry and a Progressive Sense of Place, in Bird et al, eds.

Geographies of Responsibility

Abstract Issues of space, place and politics run deep. There is a long history of the entanglement of the conceptualisation of space and place with the framing of political positions. The injunction to think space relationally is a very general one and, as this collection indicates, can lead in many directions. The particular avenue to be explored in this paper concerns the relationship between identity and responsibility, and the potential geographies of both.

In what sense a regional problem

Massey D. (1979) In what sense a regional problem? Reg. Studies 13, 233–243. The paper discusses the nature of ‘regional problems’. It argues that a number of common assumptions about regional inequality are ill-founded. In particular, it argues, many frequently-used approaches imply (implicitly or explicitly) that such problems are purely questions of geographical distribution, and that the crucial questions in their analysis concern the nature of changes in the spatial surface. This position is reflected in the methodology for assessing regional policy, in statistical techniques, in policy formulations, etc. An alternative view of the generation of regional inequality is suggested. This is based on concepts of division of labour, and explicitly relates geographical distribution to production. Examples are elaborated, and it is argued that spatial inequality in the UK may be undergoing a change both in nature and in pattern.

Academic-industry links and innovation: questioning the science park model*

Considerable resources are being devoted to science parks as policy instruments aimed at promoting research-based industrial and innovative activity. The phenomenon, which began in the US and Europe, is now attracting interest throughout the world, including Eastern Europe, South America, and Africa. The concept of linkage between commercial enterprises and academic research is central to the US and UK science park model. Drawing on empirical research completed in the UK, the paper assesses the potential and actual role of science parks in linking academic research with industrial activity. These findings show that current UK experience does not demonstrate high levels of such linkages. Further, analysis of the empirical and theoretical basis for science parks, drawing on current understanding of the innovation process and the relationship between academic research and industrial activity, suggests that the science park model itself is problematic.

The political place of locality studies

In this paper the reasons for studying local areas are examined, and in particular the context of the recent Changing Urban and Regional System Initiative in the United Kingdom. The focus is especially on the sociopolitical context of those studies. The argument is that the reasons for studying localities were in this case both historically and geographically specific. Some confusions around locality studies are also examined, in particular their incorrect equation with concrete research, description, the impact of the spatial on the social, and the postmodern. The discussion then turns to some recent arguments, especially those of Harvey, which imply that local foci are not progressive; the various strands of this position are examined and debated. All this raises the more fundamental question of what is meant by the terms place and locality.

Geography on the agenda1

The article begins by considering the recently revived debate about the ‘North–South divide’ in the UK, and argues that theoretical work in geography on questions of regional uneven developments have had little impact on its political formulation. It takes off from this to reflect on the role of ‘the academic’, on the nature of social science practice and the status of its ‘knowledge production’, and on geographys potential social roles (and current popular image). It argues that geography needs to be more confident of its own specificity, for in that lies its potential contribution. Two elements of specificity are pointed to (among many potential ones): the coexistence of physical and human geography and the significance of, and need for the reformulation of, many popular and political concepts of space.

New Directions in Space

Those in the ‘discipline’ of geography have for long had a difficult relation to the notion of ‘space’ and ‘the spatial’. There has been much head-scratching, much theorising, much changing of mind. Sometimes the notion has been clasped whole-heartedly as the only claimable distinguishing characteristic within the academic division of labour. Sometimes it has been spurned as necessarily fetishised. There have also, along with these switchbacks, been major shifts in the way in which ‘space/the spatial’ was itself to be conceived.

Industrial Restructuring versus the Cities

The paper argues that changes in the national economy are important in an explanation of inner city job changes and focuses upon structural reorganisation in the electrical, electronics and aerospace equipment sectors. In the survey firms, these sectors lost over 36,000 jobs in the study period, most of them in London, Manchester, Merseyside, and Birmingham. The elimination of excess capacity and the need to cut costs are identified as the most important restructuring process. Most of the job losses are caused by closures or contractions with about one quarter due to contraction with relocation and about 10 per cent due to movement from the cities without contraction.

Landscape as a provocation: reflections on moving mountains

This article opens with a story of the mobility and varied temporalities of a particular landscape and uses this to reflect on a range of issues that revolve around the different kinds of ‘grounding’ that are appealed to in sociocultural, political and academic life. It reflects upon the relations between human and natural sciences, the nature of appeals between them, and the important, but often questionable, place within this of particular political positions. It goes on to query the role of ‘Nature’ as a grounding to place and landscape and stresses the potentially differential effectivities of contrasting temporalities – between, for example, the temporalities of the taskspace and the temporalities of tectonics. Nonetheless, the argument continues, there are indeed provocations from the moving rocks to the nature of scientific discourse and to debates within political philosophy. It concludes with a conceptualization of both landscape and place as events.

Industrial restructuring as class restructuring: Production decentralization and local uniqueness

Massey D. (1983) Industrial restructuring as class restructuring: production decentralization and local uniqueness, Reg. Studies 17, 73–89. Industrial change is also a process of social change. This article examines the impact on two very different kinds of area of the entry of new forms of economic activity. It points out that, although in each case the new industry was the same (branch plants employing women in low-paid and unskilled jobs), the social effects in the two regions were very different. In one kind of region the old basis of the labour movement is being undermined, in the other the division between labour and capital may be becoming clearer. The social processes of the reproduction of spatial inequality are examined and it is shown how class and other divisions—such as those based on gender—are at the heart of this dynamic.