Doreen Massey famous quotes

For me, places are articulations of 'natural' and social relations, relations that are not fully contained within the place itself. So, first, places are not closed or bounded - which, politically, lays the ground for critiques of exclusivity. Second, places are not 'given' - they are always in open-ended process. They are in that sense 'events'. Third, they and their identity will always be contested (we could almost talk about local-level struggles for hegemony).
-- Doreen Massey

#Struggle #Identity #Hegemony

If time is the dimension of change, then space is the dimension of coexisting difference. And that is both a source of nourishment (something that the globalisation gurus seem altogether to have foregone), and a challenge (how negotiate difference, how to address inequality, and so forth).
-- Doreen Massey

#Differences #Space #Challenges

Much of life for many people, even in the heart of the First World, still consists of waiting in a bus shelter with your shopping for a bus that never comes.
-- Doreen Massey

#Heart #Shopping #People

Our overvaluation of speed (time here as only money) has robbed us of many things that are at least equally precious.
-- Doreen Massey

#Speed

You ask why London has to 'stand for' anything. One response is that in fact it always inevitably does. One could say at the moment it stands for a complex mix of multiculturalism and financial power. Interestingly, that is a political mix of progressive and oppressive. What I'm arguing is simply that we should take responsibility for the effects of 'our place' around the world. To take responsibility for our embeddedness. If you don't want to, so be it. It does demand an imaginative engagement with our planetary interdependence and that can be quite challenging.
-- Doreen Massey

#Responsibility #Political #Challenges

Incidentally, I don't think there is a non-adjectival 'globalisation'. What we have now is a particular form: dominated by finance and multinational corporations and by a rhetoric (though not a reality) of 'free trade' and market forces. So I'm not a localist. I'm an internationalist, but one who believes (a) that such a thing is really only possible through a prior grounding and (b) that the terms of our present globalisation have to be challenged politically.
-- Doreen Massey

#Believe #Reality #Thinking

The problem with the finance sector is not that it has crashed (though that has done enormous damage around the world) but the damage that it did even in its pomp. It is for that reason that we must not go back to business as usual. Most of all it is imperative we reduce the dominance of finance. And that means economically, ideologically, and in terms of political voice.
-- Doreen Massey

#Mean #Voice #Political

Human curiosity, the urge to know, is a powerful force and is perhaps the best secret weapon of all in the struggle to unravel the workings of the natural world.

The struggle of today is not altogether for today - it is for a vast future also.

The purpose of armed struggle is not simply to kill ... its purpose is to reach a political goal,

We can build a collective civic space large enough for all our separate identities, that we can be E Pluribus Unum - Out of One, Many.

People who hold important positions in society are commonly labelled "somebodies," and their inverse "nobodies"-both of which are, of course, nonsensical descriptors, for we are all, by necessity, individuals with distinct identities and comparable claims on existence. Such words are nevertheless an apt vehicle for conveying the disparate treatment accorded to different groups. Those without status are all but invisible: they are treated brusquely by others, their complexities trampled upon and their singularities ignored.

A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State's motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY.

Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons. They're usually fought for hegemony, for business. And then of course there's the business of war.

Human beings are many-layered creatures, and do not succumb to the hegemony of others as easily as historians and politicians sometimes imply. Those Welsh, Scottish and Anglo-Irish individuals who became part of the British Establishment in this period did not in the main sell out in the sense of becoming Anglicised look-alikes. Instead, they became British in a new and intensely profitable fashion, while remaining in their own minds and behavior Welsh, or Scottish, or Irish aswell.

The scope of America's global hegemony is admittedly great, but its depth is shallow, limited by both domestic and external restraints.

For me, places are articulations of 'natural' and social relations, relations that are not fully contained within the place itself. So, first, places are not closed or bounded - which, politically, lays the ground for critiques of exclusivity. Second, places are not 'given' - they are always in open-ended process. They are in that sense 'events'. Third, they and their identity will always be contested (we could almost talk about local-level struggles for hegemony).