This new book brings together Doreen Massey's key writings on three areas central to a range of disciplines. In addition, the author reflects on the development of these ideas and outlines her current position on these important issues. The book is organized around the three themes of space, place and gender. It traces the development of ideas about the social nature of space and place and the relation of both to issues of gender and debates within feminism. It is debates in these areas which have been crucial in bringing geography to the centre of social sciences thinking in recent years, and this book includes writings that have been fundamental to that process. Beginning with the economy and social structures of production, it develops a wider notion of spatiality as the product of intersecting social relations. In turn this has lead to conceptions of 'place' as essentially open and hybrid, always provisional and contested. These themes intersect with much current thinking about identity within both feminism and cultural studies. Each of the themes is preceded by a section which reflects on the development of ideas and sets out the context of their production. The introduction assesses the current state of play and argues for the close relationship of new thinking on each of these themes. This book will be of interest to students in geography, social theory, women's studies and cultural studies.

Direct, interpersonal violence is a pervasive, yet often mundane feature of our day-to-day lives; paradoxically, violence is both ordinary and extraordinary. Violence, in other words, is often hidden in plain sight. Space, Place, and Violence seeks to uncover that which is too apparent: to critically question both violent geographies and the geographies of violence. With a focus on direct violence, this book situates violent acts within the context of broader political and structural conditions. Violence, it is argued, is both a social and spatial practice. Adopting a geographic perspective, Space, Place, and Violence provides a critical reading of how violence takes place and also produces place. Specifically, four spatial vignettes – home, school, streets, and community – are introduced, designed so that students may think critically how ‘race’, sex, gender, and class inform violent geographies and geographies of violence.

In the last two decades, historians have increasingly sought to understand how environments, ‘built’ and otherwise, architectural surroundings, landscapes, and conceptual ‘places’ and ‘spaces’ have affected the nature and scope of political power, cultural production and social experience . The essays in this collection expand upon this already rich field of inquiry by combining an analytical approach sensitive to questions of gender with an exploration of ideas of political space. The volume demonstrates how the gendered and political meanings of space—be that space domestic or public, rural or urban, real or imagined, or a combination of all these and more—are fashioned through the movement of historical actors through space and time. Whether in delineating the gendered and politicized space of the pulpit; the sickroom; the Irish farmyard; the London suffrage atelier; the domestic space created by the wireless; the lesbian ‘scene’ of rural Canada; the eighteenth-century ladies' ‘closet’; or the public space within the ‘public history’ of historic houses, the volume demonstrates how the meanings of these spaces are not fixed, but are challenged and reformulated. This book was originally published as a special issue of women’s History Review.

Feminist Spaces introduces students and academic researchers to major themes and empirical studies in feminist geography. It examines new areas of feminist research including: embodiment, sexuality, masculinity, intersectional analysis, and environment and development. In addition to considering gender as a primary subject, this book provides a comprehensive overview of feminist geography by highlighting contemporary research conducted from a feminist framework which goes beyond the theme of gender to include issues such as social justice, activism, (dis)ability, and critical pedagogy. Through case studies, this book challenges the construction of dichotomies that tend to oversimplify categories such as developed and developing, urban and rural, and the Global North and South, without accounting for the fluid and intersecting aspects of gender, space, and place. The chapters weave theoretical and empirical material together to meet the needs of students new to feminism, as well as those with a feminist background but new to geography, through attention to basic geographical concepts in the opening chapter. The text encourages readers to think of feminist geography as addressing not only gender, but a set of methodological and theoretical perspectives applied to a range of topics and issues. A number of interactive exercises, activities, and ‘boxes’ or case studies, illustrate concepts and supplement the text. These prompts encourage students to explore and analyze their own positionality, as well as motivate them to change and impact their surroundings. Feminist Spaces emphasizes activism and critical engagement with diverse communities to recognize this tradition in the field of feminism, as well as within the discipline of geography. Combining theory and practice as a central theme, this text will serve graduate level students as an introduction to the field of feminist geography, and will be of interest to students in related fields such as environmental studies, development, and women’s and gender studies.

Examines how social boundaries are constructed between men and women in the work place and how these differences are grounded, constituted in and through, space, place and situated social networks.

Feminist approaches within the social sciences have expanded enormously since the 1960s. In addition, in recent years, geographic perspectives have become increasingly significant as feminist recognition of the differences between women, their diverse experiences in different parts of the world and the importance of location in the social construction of knowledge has placed varied geographies at the centre of contemporary feminist and postmodern debates. Gender, Identity and Place is an accessible and clearly written introduction to the wide field of issues that have been addressed by geographers and feminist scholars. It combines the careful definition and discussion of key concepts and theoretical approaches with a wealth of empirical detail from a wide-ranging selection of case studies and other empirical research. It is organized on the basis of spatial scale, examining the relationships between gender and place from the body to the nation, although the links between different spatial scales are also emphasized. The conceptual division and spatial separation between the public and private spheres and their association with men and women respectively has been a crucial part of the social construction of gendered differences and its establishment, maintenance and reshaping from industrial urbanization to the end of the millennium is a central linking theme in the eight substantive chapters. The book concludes with an assessment of the possibilities of doing feminist research. It will be essential reading for students in geography, feminist theory, women's studies, anthropology and sociology.

Questioning the implicit assumptions that we make about space, this text considers conventional notions of social science, as well as demonstrating how a vigorous understanding of space can impact on political consequences.

This accessible and engaging book explores the ways that "space, place, and sex" are inextricably linked from the micro to the macro level, from the individual body to the globe. Drawing on queer, feminist, gender, social, and cultural studies, Lynda Johnston and Robyn Longhurst highlight the complex nature of sex and sexuality and how they are connected to both virtual and physical spaces and places. Their aim is to enrich our understanding of sexual identities and practices--whether they be lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, asexual, queer, or heterosexual. They show that bodies are defined and connected through media such as television, movies, ads, and the Internet, as well as through "real" places such as homes, churches, sports arenas, city streets, beaches, and wilderness. Drawing on a diverse array of historical and contemporary examples, the authors argue convincingly that sexual politics permeate all places and spaces at every level of geographical scale. Thus, they illustrate, sexuality affects the way people live in and interact with space and place, as space and place in turn affect people's sexuality.

Massey has organized these debates around the three themes of space, place, and gender.

"Handsomely illustrated with many color photographs, this book . . . offers a massive amount of data on the technologies, styles and designs, as well as the symbolic and ritual meanings, of women's tent and related architecture in (various African) cultures".--WOMEN'S REVIEW OF BOOKS. 24 color, 66 bandw photos. 148 line drawings.