Spatial Delight

Much of our world – how we imagine it, how we inhabit it – continues to be shaped by various forms of imperialism and colonialism. In this episode, we discuss how geography can help us understand the many entanglements of the global and the local.

Doreen Massey thought geographically about everything. She rejected the neat, linear ideas of spatial difference that have long shaped western geographical imaginations. Massey challenged western scientists, including herself, to stop pretending their position was in any way universal, and to provincialise their questions and theories instead.

What has shaped your geographical imagination? What – or who – has challenged the way you understand the world? How does geography matter to you? Please use this form to share your thoughts.

Episode Credits
Host: Agata Lisiak
Guests: John Allen, David Featherstone, Tariq Jazeel, Linda McDowell, Tracey Skelton
Also Featured: Doreen Massey
Writer and Producer: Agata Lisiak
Senior Editor: Susan Stone
Sound Producer: Reece Cox
Production Assistant: Adèle Martin
Music: Studio R
Artwork: Bose Sarmiento
Special Thanks: The Open University, Michael Todd
In partnership with: The Sociological Review Foundation
Funded by: Volkswagen Foundation

Find more about Spatial Delight at The Sociological Review.

Doreen Massey’s work quoted or mentioned in this episode:

• Is the World Really Shrinking?, The Open University radio lecture, 2006
• Doreen Massey on Space, Social Science Space, 2013
• Space, Place, and Politics, The Open University, 2009
• A Global Sense of Place, Marxism Today, 1991
• Space, Place, and Gender, Doreen Massey, (Polity Press, 1994)
• Geography Matters!, edited by Doreen Massey and John Allen (Cambridge University Press, 1984)
• Human Geography Today, edited by Doreen Massey, John Allen and Philip Sarre (Wiley, 1991)
• Geographical Worlds, edited by Doreen Massey and John Allen (The Open University, 1995)
• A Place in the World, edited by Doreen Massey and Pat Jess (The Open University, 1995)

Though she was a life-long Liverpool FC fan, Doreen Massey felt like a “space invader” whenever she attended matches, as she’d often be one of the few women on football terraces. Inspired by Massey’s usage of the term, sociologist Nirmal Puwar developed it into a sociological concept to understand “what happens when women and racialized minorities take up ‘privileged’ positions which have not been ‘reserved’ for them”. What kind of bodies are the somatic norm? What are the conditions of inclusion?

Spatial Delight host Agata Lisiak speaks with Nirmal Puwar about her book Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place (2004), and about the postcolonial acts of space invading that Nirmal and her collaborators staged in Coventry’s iconic cathedral.

We’d love to hear your stories too. Are you a space invader? Please share your experiences with us here
Episode Credits
Host: Agata LisiakGuest: Nirmal Puwar
Also Featured: Doreen Massey
Writer and Producer: Agata Lisiak
Senior Editor: Susan Stone
Sound Producer: Reece Cox
Production Assistant: Adèle Martin
Music: Studio R
Artwork: Bose Sarmiento
Special Thanks to: Nitin Sawhney, Kuldip Powar
In partnership with: The Sociological Review Foundation
Funded by: Volkswagen Foundation

Find more about Spatial Delight at The Sociological Review.

Episode Resources

Doreen Massey’s work quoted or mentioned in this episode:

• Space, Place and Gender (Polity Press, 1994)
• When Theory Meets Politics, Antipode, 40.3 (2008)

Nirmal Puwar’s selected works:

• Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place (Bloomsbury, 2004)
• The Noise of the Past
• Unraveling, a film directed by Kuldip Powar, music by Nitin Sawhney, produced by Nirmal Puwar and Sanjay Sharma, 2008
• Meetings: John Berger in the Library, an essay from A Jar of Wild Flowers, 2016
• Walking Through Litter in Life Writing Projects
• Indomitable Mint in The Garden Zine
• Compiling Maxwell Street by Tim Cresswell, Sociological Review Magazine, 2019
• In Memoriam: Tree Felling at The Plaza and In Transition: Comrades for the City – films by Adele Mary Reed in collaboration with Nirmal Puwar and Paul Chokran
• Puwar, N. and Sharma, S. 2011. Introduction: War Cries, The Senses and Society, 6:3, 261-266.

Spatial Delight is a podcast about the politics of space inspired by the life and work of British geographer Doreen Massey. Over the course of ten episodes (eight in English, two in Spanish), we engage with Massey’s enduring concepts – a global sense of place, geometries of power, space invaders, geographies of responsibility, and more – to challenge the way we think about the world today. As we travel from a London laundromat to a public park in Berlin, and invite listeners to take a closer look at a contested waterfront in Kochi and the Egyptian desert, we learn that “the way we are, and the way places are, is a product of our interrelations with everywhere else,” as Massey put it.
Created by Agata Lisiak, Associate Professor of Migration Studies at Bard College Berlin, Spatial Delight seeks to inspire listeners to think about space and place as full of power, and to imagine political alternatives to the current world order.
Episode Credits
Host: Agata Lisiak
Featured Guests: John Allen, Yasmin Gunaratnam
Also Featured: Doreen Massey
Writer and Producer: Agata Lisiak
Senior Editor: Susan Stone
Sound Producer: Reece Cox
Production Assistant: Adèle Martin
Music: Studio R
Artwork: Bose Sarmiento
Special Thanks to: Serpentine Gallery, Michael Chanan
In partnership with: The Sociological Review Foundation
Funded by: Volkswagen Foundation

Find more about Spatial Delight at The Sociological Review.

In this first episode, you will learn who Doreen Massey was and get a sneak peek at her politics. We’ll hear from Massey’s former collaborators, friends and colleagues. And from Massey herself.
For nearly three decades, Massey was a professor at The Open University and “loved every minute of it”. The OU’s aim has been to literally open up access to higher education for a wider variety of people. Our approach with this podcast is similar: you don’t need to come prepared – and you certainly don’t need an academic degree to listen to it.
Knowledge and politics can be produced in a wide variety of places. What intellectual spaces have you encountered or actively created beyond the classroom? Please use this form to share your reflections with us.
Episode Credits
Host: Agata Lisiak
Guests: John Allen, Ash Amin, David Featherstone, Yasmin Gunaratnam, Tariq Jazeel, Linda McDowell, Tracey Skelton, Hilary Wainwright
Also Featured: Doreen Massey
Writer and Producer: Agata Lisiak
Senior Editor: Susan Stone
Sound Producer: Reece Cox
Production Assistant: Adèle Martin
Music: Studio R
Artwork: Bose Sarmiento
Special Thanks: The Open University, Michael Chanan
In partnership with: The Sociological Review Foundation
Funded by: Volkswagen Foundation
Find more about Spatial Delight at The Sociological Review.Doreen Massey’s essays and interviews quoted in this episode:

• Doreen Massey speaking about London, extract from Secret City, dir. Michael Chanan, 2012
• “I feel as if I've been able to reinvent myself” – a biographical interview with Doreen Massey, by Tim Freytag and Michael Hoyler, Department of Geography, University of Heidelberg, 1998
• Understanding cities – Doreen Massey interviewed by Bob Catterall, City, 2000
• Space, Place, and Politics – opening remarks, The Open University, 2009
• The Possibilities of a Politics of Place Beyond Place? A Conversation with Doreen Massey, Human Geography Research Group, Sophie Bond, David Featherstone, Scottish Geographical Journal, 2009
• Liverpool's football activists are part of a wider social movement, The Guardian, 2010

Selected tributes and obituaries:

• Hilary Wainwright, “How we will miss that chuckle”: my friend, Doreen Massey
• Jeremy Gilbert and Jo Littler, The Doreen Massey we knew
• Emma Jackson, Keeping one eye on the bus: A tribute to Doreen Massey
• David Featherstone, Doreen Massey obituary

Geografes como Doreen Massey argumentan que el espacio es producido socialmente. En este episodio hablamos de la producción del espacio por cuerpas migrantes y escuchamos del carnaval cómo una perfecta invasión espacial.
Bose Sarmiento, artista feminista, nos transporta a las calles de Berlín durante el 8 de Marzo. El día en que las protestas del día internacional de la mujer toman la ciudad. En el caos de las demostraciones, se deja llevar por la música para encontrar a la Marea Abya Yala. Lo que guía este episodio es la curiosidad acerca de la musicalidad que rodea la protesta latinoamericana. ¿Cómo suena? ¿Cuál es su rol en la protesta? ¿De dónde surge esta “negociación del espacio" cómo la llamaría Massey, y qué espacios produce?
Para adentrarse en ello, Bose habla con la antropóloga y bailarina, Cristina Barría Knopf, una de las líderes de la colectiva Comparsa Carnaval en Berlín. Allí, Cristina nos habla del carnaval, un rito de suma importancia en Abya Yala. Por años, era durante el carnaval, que las raíces originarias lograban permear la cultura de dominación colonial. Hoy en Berlín, durante las protestas del 8M, la Comparsa trae ese rito de resistencia y alienta a mujeres y disidencias a ocupar el espacio público, les alienta a sostener la diferencia.
Episode Credits
Host: Bose Sarmiento
Guest: Ana Cristina Barría Knopf
Writer: Bose Sarmiento
Producer: Agata Lisiak
Sound Producer: Bose Sarmiento
Music: Studio R
Artwork: Bose Sarmiento
Special Thanks: All the Abya Yala collectives making noise at demonstrations
In partnership with: The Sociological Review Foundation
Funded by: Volkswagen Foundation
Find more about Spatial Delight at The Sociological Review
Episode Resources

Doreen Massey’s work quoted or mentioned in this episode:

• Space, Place and Gender (Polity Press, 1994)
• For Space (Sage, 2005)
• A Global Sense of Place, Marxism Today, 1991

Recommended resources:

• Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place, Nirmal Puwar (Bloomsbury, 2004)
• Performance, Diana Taylor (Duke University Press, 2016)
• The Archive and the Repertoire, Diana Taylor (Duke University Press, 2003)
• ¿Qué son los estudios de Performance? 2015
• Hasta abajo | Radio Ambulante Lisette Arevalo, season 12, episode 22, 2023.
• iLe: canciones contra el poder | Radio Ambulante Silvia Viñas y Eliezer Budasoff, season 12, episode 26, 2023.
• Paloma Leiva’s YouTube channel
• “Quedamos en el limbo”. ¿Quién habla sobre las cuidadoras remuneradas en el 8M?

You can find more resources at The Sociological Review