An example Massey gives is the use of transport. Every time someone uses their own car, they have increased personal mobility. However, the impact of people using private transport is that public transport becomes less financially viable and thus the people who rely upon that system have their mobility decreased. She further argues that to maintain the lifestyles of the wealthy in First World societies, resources from across the world are depleted resulting in numerous environmental and social consequences.
Characteristics of Place
Massey argues for the dynamic and relational nature of space. To demonstrate this, Massey puts forward four main characteristics of place.
1. Places have multiple identities
According to Massey, places resist one fixed, unique identity but are ‘full of internal conflicts’, something which is revealed by attempts of groups to define and control a particular space (‘A Global Sense of Place’, 1994). An example Massey gives in her paper ‘A Place Called Home?’ is the urbanisation of the ‘Isle of Dogs’ and the emergence of London’s ‘Docklands’. The development at London’s Docklands in the 1980s showed groups seeking ‘the identity of a place by laying claim to some particular moment/location in time–space when the definition of the area and the social relations dominant within it were to the advantage of that particular claimant group’ (1994). This means, as Massey goes on to argue, that ‘the identity of any place, including that place called home, is in one sense forever open to contestation’ (1994). By having a multitude of identities, a place is continually reproduced and reinterpreted throughout time.
2. Places are not static; they are processes
Conventional readings of space, such as those by Ernest Laclau in New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time, have positioned it as the counterpart of ‘time’; space is seen as static and time as mobile and dynamic (1990). Massey refutes this notion by conceptualising space as being equally dynamic, containing multitudes which span across all dimensions. Globalisation confirms much of this if we take a city such as London. London is a key figure for financial trade across the entire world – powerful institutions are based there and neo-liberal economies were first envisioned there. This gives London power over other places across the globe and allows it, as an abstract space, to dominate. While London geographically appears static, it is dynamic due to its ability to influence, control and domineer other places across the world.
3. Places are not enclosures with clear boundaries
While we often think of a place as being enclosed or having clear boundaries, Massey suggests, instead, that places must be understood through their relationship to the outside world. As such, Massey argues that places are boundless and can be ‘imagined as articulated moments of networks of social relations and understandings’ (‘A Global Sense of Place’, 1994). Boundaries are set up to divide regions and communities, categorising ‘them and us’; Massey’s reading allows for places to be read as ‘open and porous’(‘Introduction’, 1994). Giving the example of Kilburn in London, Massey demonstrates how places come to be boundless; Kilburn has a history which encompasses many communities and groups of people and the effects of globalisation and immigration can be seen in its diverse population. By encompassing the ‘outside’ in the definition of what constitutes a place, we can ‘get away from the common association between penetrability and vulnerability. For it is this kind of association which makes invasion by newcomers so threatening’ (‘A Global Sense of Place’, 1994).
4. The uniqueness of a place is defined by social relations
Massey’s reconceptualising of space, however, does not deny the importance of the uniqueness of place. Instead, Massey argues that ‘the specificity of place is continually reproduced, but it is not a specificity which results from some long, internalized history’ (‘A Global Sense of Place’, 1994). Massey sees globalisation and the subsequent uneven geographical development as a source of a place’s uniqueness. Places like Kilburn have specificity not because of a singular, unchangeable identity but because of the vast network of social relations found within the community. Moreover, as places do not have a fixed identity marked by their heritage, they are made all the more unique. Massey states that ‘a further element of specificity from the accumulated history of a place, with that history itself imagined as the product of layer upon layer of different sets of linkages, both local and to the wider world’ (‘A Global Sense of Place’, 1994). A space, therefore, derives its uniqueness from its multitude of identities and its importance and historical significance to different groups at different time periods.
Gender and Geography
In examining gender in relation to spatial inequality, Massey argues that women have often been confined to private spaces such as the household, whereas men are able to move through public space unhindered. As previously mentioned, Massey argues that time is associated with dynamism and movement, whereas space is seen as flat and static. This distinction, Massey argues, contributes to our understanding of why space is typically ‘coded female and denigrated’ (‘Politics and Space/Time’, 1994). Women too were confined to and associated with this fixed space as Massey goes on to state that ‘women’s mobility… is restricted – in a thousand different ways, from physical violence to being ogled at or made to feel quite simply ‘out of place’ – not by “capital”, but by men’ (‘A Global Sense of Place’, 1994). Women, therefore, comprise one of the groups which Massey argues are ‘effectively imprisoned’ by ‘differentiated mobility’ due to obstacles which prevent them from initiating ‘flows and movement’ (‘A Global Sense of Place’, 1994).
Reactions to the transition of women to the workplace in the nineteenth century support Massey’s argument that gender impacts spatial inequality. Massey finds that it wasn’t the idea of work which threatened the patriarchal order, but the idea of women working outside the home, thereby moving away from their domestic roles and into a public, individual life, defined not solely by the family. Massey writes that:
