Doreen Massey: space is not static but dynamic & multiple

Doreen Massey’s distinctive concept of space-time introduces a cultural perspective into the idea of space, which is traditionally seen as a passive and apolitical “setting for objects and their interaction” in a timeless context. Rather than conceptualize spatial relations as social relations taking a particular geographical form, Massey conceptualizes space and social relations as mutually constructed. And if space and the spatial configurations of social relations produce social effects, space and the spatial are implicated in the production of history (p. 254); space, therefore, cannot be seen as the realm of stasis. In Massey’s words, “Space is not static, nor time spaceless…neither [spatiality or temporality] can be conceptualized as the absence of the other” (p. 264). Because space is conceived in terms of social relations, and because social relations are dynamic and multiple, and because individuals hold not only different positions but consequently different experiences and interpretations of spatial social relations, space does not imply fixity or stasis but “a simultaneous multiplicity of spaces” in the “lived world” (p. 3). That is, space should be conceived in relation to social relations, power, symbols, and representations.