Geography and Geographical Thought

Geography and Geographical Thought

To see the video of David and Doreen’s conversation please visit http://bcove.me/siljk2yb

David Livingstone I got into geography through two different routes. One was: I went up to the university determined not to study geography as a matter of fact. And someone said to me, ‘You know, you need a third subject, so why not just take geography?’ So I did. And I was completely captivated by a set of lectures given by an old prof. who was very, very interested in intellectual history from a geography perspective. And this opened up to me a world of ideas that I had just not been familiar with before.

So that was one route. But the other route, I think, is more visceral. When you live in a place like Northern Ireland, your address matters a great deal; where you come from makes a huge difference to your outlook, attitudes, perception of communities, and the like. And so I think those two forces – thinking about everyday life in a province where your location matters a great, great deal, together with this world of ideas that Bill Kirk was opening up to me – were the twin tracks through which I came into the study of geography.

Doreen MasseyThat’s amazing. I didn’t know that. And it really speaks to me. I am actually quite suspicious of origin stories and you didn’t present it like that – you know, that ‘I was always a geographer from the day I was born …’

[Page 730]David No I was not!

Doreen No, exactly, exactly. So I really like that bit about where you lived. I was hesitating about mentioning it but it was true for me too. And, again, at two levels. One, I come from Manchester, I come from the North [of England] and I was very conscious of regional inequality. It was part of our daily discourse. There was this saying that ‘what Manchester thinks today London will think tomorrow’ Very much, not just a pride, but a kind of defiance about being dominated by another region.

So there was that. I also came from a council estate – corporation housing as we used to call it then – which had a really bad name. So if you came from Wythenshawe, people were a bit frightened of you and people would say things like ‘oh you got out alive then’, and stuff like that, and I guess at times it was seen as a place that you wouldn’t really want to put on your what we now call CV because that wouldn’t help you get a job. So there was a consciousness that location mattered, that place mattered, at a number of levels right from the start. Yes.

David Well that’s true for me. And ironically, some of things that were part of my everyday life, I didn’t conceptualise until much later. A dramatic one is that when you live in a place like Northern Ireland, there are some places where you will say certain things and some places where you won’t say them. So, there’s a real connection between what I sometimes call ‘location and ‘locution’, between, what you can say, and where you can say it. And indeed that can matter – in fact it did matter – as to whether you survived in a place like Northern Ireland; saying the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time could have serious consequences. That was part of everyday life.

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