Doreen Massey (1944–2016)

This is an academic (but very readable) look at the act of doing and being diversity in an institutional context. The foundation of Ahmed's book is a series of interviews with diversity professionals at universities in the UK and Australia, as well as her personal experience as a woman of color in the institutions where she's worked. Ahmed doesn't give the reader any easy steps to take, but instead brings us a clear look at how institutions work and what that means for the people or groups who are trying to change an institutional culture that reproduces and favors whiteness.

Much of what she talks about reflects concerns and experiences I've heard from friends and colleagues of color. Other topics shone a light on things I'd never thought about, but that I recognized as an obvious part of the institutional foundations I've experienced. Ahmed's narrative includes looking at the language we use to describe this work (including why "diversity" is such a beloved term), how whiteness as the norm impacts workers and students of color, what actually goes on in committee meetings, the way an institution can be personified, how documents can help and hinder communication, and she ultimately explores some philosophical approaches to thinking through these efforts in a fresh way.

Although there are aspects of the interviews and assertions that are unique to a UK context, most of what Ahmed discusses is just as applicable to institutions in the United States. And while her philosophy and academic background can sometimes make this a dense book, her clear writing style makes it an easy read (and one that made me want to underline every spot-on sentence). I'd really recommend this book for anyone interested in picking apart the successes and failures of institutional diversity efforts (particularly in higher education).… (mehr)

As several of the reviews have already mentioned, this book is written primarily for human geographers. Perhaps the ideal audience for this book is the human geographer with a chip on his / her shoulder and a love for complicating our notions of space.

The book has many themes which develop at different paces and at different depths, but as the title suggests this is a book primarily “for space” -- which means recapturing the challenge of space and the potential wonder it can inspire. For Massey, many of the dominant discourses of the time purposely avoid the challenge of space “by convening spatial multiplicity into temporal sequence; by understanding the spatial as depthless instaneity; by imagining ‘the global’ as somehow always ‘up there’, ‘out there’, certainly somewhere else.” For Massey, these discourses avoid the challenge of space, the challenge of multiplicity, and the relational possibilities of space.

This book can be harsh reading at times for outsiders to human geography. A major reason is that whereas other books -- particularly popular books on globalization and world affairs -- attempt to tame space and difference, this book unleashes them. Unfortunately, the book also unleashes a new language of geography that can be difficult to process as times. To take but one example, the term “coevalness” plays an important role in Massey’s work. The term stands for the recognition and respect in situations of mutual implication and for the author is the precondition for a true dialogue between different partners.

Perhaps the most important work this book does is in challenging our current understandings of globalization, in particular the mystification of globalization as emanating from somewhere else. Massey effectively shows how modern discourses of globalization lend to mystification and aspatial thinking. To counter this notion, Massey locates the US and UK, and London in particular, as places where globalization is produced (101). Globalization discourse also too frequently imagines countries as at different stages of development in a single development path. For Massey, to imagine places in this way is to perform epistemic violence on the differences of the world and their potentials. For Massey, reclaiming space also means reclaiming the possibilities of “multiplicity.”

The book is, in all likelihood, a masterpiece of human geography. However, for a human geography outsider like me, the book was at times off putting. My instinct throughout the book was that -- in spite of Massey’s normative commitments to complexity -- the points she was trying to make were in fact relatively simple and could be communicated in much less complicated language. This instinct was strengthened by my experience with the chapter entitled “Aspatial Globalization,” which was by far the clearest and most compelling chapter of the book.… (mehr)