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For Space cover

Geography

Geography

For Space

Doreen Massey

A theoretical book by the geographer Doreen Massey arguing that space should be understood as the product of social relations: open, plural and always under construction rather than a fixed surface or container. It examines how ways of imagining space shape politics, and proposes a relational view of place, globalisation and responsibility.

Prerequisites: Familiarity with debates in cultural and social geography and some prior reading in social theory.

Difficulty Level
Advanced
Academic Level
Graduate
spaceplacesocial theorypower geometryglobalization

01 / Reading Guide

Reading Guide

Citation

Massey, D. (2005). For Space. SAGE Publications.

Chapter Summary

The book is a single sustained argument in five parts and fifteen chapters, about 230 pages. The publisher describes it as an impassioned argument for revitalising the imagination of space: it takes on assumptions from philosophy and familiar ways of characterising the twenty-first century world, and shows how they restrain our understanding of both the challenge and the potential of space. It proceeds through philosophical and theoretical engagement and through personal and political reflection. A guiding line from the publisher's description is that if time is the dimension of change, then space is the dimension of the social: the contemporaneous co-existence of others.

Part One: Setting the Scene (Opening Propositions)

A single opening chapter sets out the propositions on which the rest of the book builds: the claim that how we think about space inflects our understanding of the world, of others and of politics.

Part Two: Unpromising Associations (Space/Representation; The Prison-House of Synchrony; The Horizontalities of Deconstruction; The Life in Space)

Four chapters, on space and representation, synchrony, deconstruction and lived space, carry out the book's engagement with well-established assumptions from philosophy. In the publisher's account this is where the argument sets space against fixed or neutral conceptions and prepares the alternative concept used in the rest of the book.

Part Three: Living in Spatial Times? (Spatializing the History of Modernity; Instantaneity/Depthlessness; Aspatial Globalization; (Contrary to Popular Opinion) Space Cannot Be Annihilated by Time; Elements for Alternatives)

Five chapters take up familiar ways of characterising the contemporary world. The publisher says the book asks how best to characterise these so-called spatial times; the chapters engage with the history of modernity, with instantaneity, with globalisation presented as aspatial, and with the claim that space is annihilated by time, which it contests. The last chapter of the part proposes elements for alternatives.

Part Four: Re-Orientations (Slices through Space; The Elusiveness of Place)

Two chapters re-orient the discussion, with "Slices through Space" and "The Elusiveness of Place" turning to place. The publisher's description says the book asks how a sense of place, and a responsibility for place beyond place, might be developed.

Part Five: A Relational Politics of the Spatial (Throwntogetherness: The Politics of the Event of Place; There Are No Rules of Space and Place; Making and Contesting Time-Spaces)

Three final chapters draw out political consequences. They treat place as an event of being thrown together, argue that no fixed rules for space and place can be assumed, and consider the making and contesting of time-spaces.

Key Concepts

Parts One and Two: Rethinking Space

  • Space as social: space understood as the dimension of coexisting others, not an empty container.
  • Synchrony: a term from the chapter title "The Prison-House of Synchrony", referring to space treated as a timeless, simultaneous arrangement.
  • Lived space: space as made through everyday life and relations.

Parts Three to Five: Globalisation, Place and Politics

  • Spatial times: the idea that the contemporary world is organised spatially and the book's questioning of it.
  • Aspatial globalisation: accounts of globalisation that ignore its geography.
  • Throwntogetherness: place as an ongoing coming-together of trajectories.
  • Relational politics: politics built on the interrelatedness of places and people.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

  • Argument with a thesis. The book argues a clear position: that space should be imagined as open, relational and under construction, and that this changes how globalisation, cities and place are understood.
  • Reach beyond the discipline. The publisher quotes the artist Olafur Eliasson, who works with the idea of space as intertwined with time and ever changing, as an enthusiastic reader.
  • Mix of registers. The publisher stresses that it combines philosophical and theoretical engagement with personal and political reflection and is "serious, and sometimes irreverent".
  • Compact. About 230 pages, one coherent argument, in five parts.

Limitations

  • Demanding theory. The publisher describes the argument as pursued through philosophical and theoretical engagement, and chapter titles such as "The Horizontalities of Deconstruction" point the same way; readers new to social theory will need support.
  • Argumentative rather than introductory. The book is a manifesto rather than a survey of approaches to space, so it does not map the alternatives for the reader.
  • Not a methods book. The book offers a way of thinking about space, not techniques for studying it.

Where It Fits in the Course

For Space is a theoretical argument about space and place. Space and Place by Tuan and Place: An Introduction by Cresswell are short student-friendly introductions to the humanistic and conceptual treatments of space and place that Massey builds on and criticises. The Production of Space by Lefebvre is the earlier theoretical work arguing that social space is produced, a natural companion for readers who want the lineage of the idea. Cultural Geography: A Critical Introduction and Cultural Geography are survey textbooks that place such debates within the wider subfield.

How to Use This Book

For graduate students and advanced undergraduates in human geography, social theory, urban studies and related fields, and anyone interested in the spatial turn in the social sciences and humanities.

A good plan is to read Part One slowly, because it states the propositions the book then elaborates. Parts Two and Three form the main argument against received ideas of space; Parts Four and Five develop the positive position on place and politics. Readers short of time can read Part One, then "Slices through Space" and "The Elusiveness of Place", and then the last chapter. Pair the book with Tuan or Cresswell if the concept of place is new, and with Lefebvre if you want the earlier argument about the production of space.