MASSEY

SPACE PLACE AND GENDER

PART ONE
Introduction
I have found the book written by Massy about Space, Place and Gender extremely
beyond challenging and have persevered to the best of my ability; below are notes that I
have written along the way whilst reading this book explaining in the best way that I can
the views in which I believe I have come across and my own input on some of them (I
apologise for the staggered reading, I have not yet completed this book). Massey does
make some very strong points and does open my own eyes to have spaces, places and
people are judged by others for reasons that are rarely looked into deep enough.
It is this book that made me think about class and peoples perceptions that helped give
the final shape to my third assignment.
Although there are many ways to think about space and place, many different directions
to go with such a subject, these are the views of Massey and the "issues" he has chosen
to concentrate on and discuss.
The papers collected by Massey show the most common views on space and place "in
daily and political life as well as in academe".
Massey is addressing issues he sees with peoples conception of space and place, he is
responding / replying to viewpoints he sees "as problematic". He offers up different
viewpoints for us to read and experience that are more appropriate more fitting for our
time.
The terms space and place mean many different things to everybody - everyone having a
different opinion or understanding of the two.
Place can mean so many things and yes the term can mean your "place in the world" or
the "place you call home" it could also have greater meanings in the view of Massey. A
place when looked into deeper could mean so many things, the place of importance you
hold in your community, the place of importance your community has to its
council/government or the place a stereotypical group such as the unemployed has in
social structure or governmental structure, does their "place" make them any less
important?
Throughout all of the papers that Massey has included, is a link, Massey writes "the
attempt to formulate concepts of space and place in terms of social relations". From
what I understand, this means that we are looking closely into social structure and how
each structure has an effect on each space, that space is then or can be turned into a
place due to the knowledge of its structure within, for example, a community; "one of the
relations which is likely to be important is that of class" Class has a large impact on our
spatial structure which then leads to how people behave due to this structure. Many
young mums raising young children alone all in the same area could lead to behaviours
that would maybe not seen in an area mostly populated with working families with both
parents (for example) and then because of this the area could be judged by others and
blamed on single parenting when there are always more reasons to things than just one
and the obvious.

Hannah Lewis

510566

Space, Place and Gender

Geography - the location matters to how gender is established - so the location, the area
the town the city is all a part of how each gender group may act behave, the decisions
they make, the effect the area may have on them. Each area is affected differently by
different things; poverty for example or high murder rates this will inevitably have an
effect.
Social relationships with a specific space have different meanings because each
individual interacts differently with space depending on their position with it;
for example I used to live in St. Ives; when I tell people they ask why I would move here
when I could live near beaches etc. thats because as visitors they saw it as the perfect
family getaway, however I worked in many different pubs and hotels in the area and all I
saw was alcoholics and the what this put their families through, I saw them not turning
up for work and living in an alternate reality to so many other people I had met before;
but St. Ive's is also known for their artists, and this circle is a completely different one to
the one I knew as they interacted with the same space as me but differently.
The gender differences there also seem very different to gender here, in derbyshire.
Because of the people I saw and met, I saw that most women had at least 2 jobs,
whether they had kids or not, there appeared to be a large amount of single mothers,
doing anything to just get by - but work was easier to fit into parenthood, but here it
seems harder to fit work in with kids especially if you have a limited support network.
There has been a need to turn a space into a place, to give that place a meaning - to
attach a history to it so that this 'place' is identifiable as its own space, which gives it
importance (in some cases).Stonehenge for example has been turned into a circus by the
council/British heritage, the outer side of it has been turned into an eye saw as it has a
barrier surrounding it and can only been seen and experienced if you pay, this history
has given the area a rating of now a 'place' instead of just a space that no one has heard
of or cares about.
I think Massey believes that the political and academic world have their own
understanding and views on what make 'a place' and what gave it its identity, these
spaces are judged not as an evolving changing spaces but viewed also as static.
We as world have "boundaries" everywhere and we do this so that people know were not
to "cross the line" or where the line is that they are crossing; each country has their own
imaginary border which divides one country from another, which then in turn shows you
who is in overall control of that space, and then depending on what side of the border
you are on depends not only on who is in ultimate control but then who serves under
them and in control of what etc. etc. each boundary means you could be dealt with,
helped or hindered or just ignored, it shows the rules are different that things are
different here, that once you cross that "line" you have to deal with someone else e.g.
Women especially in the western world are known for fighting the boundaries and the
restrictions of labels that have so often been placed upon them; they fight the labels and
the box of what we should be that we have in the past and still in places put in in the
present; men however are seen to have the label of protectors and decision makers, and
this I believe is why this way of thinking has been viewed as masculine.

Hannah Lewis

510566

Space, Place and Gender