Presenting an impassioned argument for revitalising our imagination of space, Doreen Massey takes on some well-established assumptions from philosophy, and some familiar ways of characterising the twenty-first century world, and shows how they restrain our understanding of both the challenge and the potential of space.
In this important new work, world-renowned geographer Doreen Massey asks: what are the implicit assumptions that we make about space? What difference does it make to re-think these assumptions? How - and why - is it important is it to think differently about space? Space has informed Doreen Massey's work on regional inequality, the politics of place, globalisation, 'nature', and the complexity of cities. For Space offers a deliberative, engaged series of inquiries into how space can be thought of in its multiplicity and complexity.
“'The reason for my enthusiasm for this book is that Doreen Massey manages to describe a certain way of perceiving movement in space which I have been - and still am - working with on different levels in my work: i.e. the idea that space is not something static and neutral, a frozen entity, but is something intertwined with time and thus ever changing - also when we are not occupying it. Doreen's descriptions of her journey through England for example are clear and precise accounts of this idea, and she very sharply characterizes the attempts not to recognize this idea as utopian and nostalgic' - Olaffur Eliasson'...destined to be widely read by many who are not geographers...in a publishing market currently so driven by what publishers think students will read, its lack of fit into established genres is hugely refreshing... a great book to read in terms of its head-on engagement with the spatial' - Geographical Research”
"Doreen Massey is one of the most profound thinkers in contemporary human geography, and her work addresses fundamental issues with great insight. This is a work of enormous ambition, breadth, and depth, and not a little complexity." -- David M. Smith
"The reason for my enthusiasm for this book is that Doreen Massey manages to describe a certain way of perceiving movement in space which I have been - and still am - working with on different levels in my work: i.e. the idea that space is not something static and neutral, a frozen entity, but is something intertwined with time and thus ever changing - also when we are not occupying it. Doreenβ²s descriptions of her journey through England for example are clear and precise accounts of this idea, and she very sharply characterizes the attempts not to recognize this idea as utopian and nostalgic." -- Olaffur Eliasson
"Destined to be widely read by many who are not geographers... in a publishing market currently so driven by what publishers think students will read, its lack of fit into established genres is hugely refreshing... a great book to read in terms of its head-on engagement with the spatial." -- Geographical Research
Fatal Freedom is an eloquent defense of every individual's right to choose a voluntary death. The author, a renowned psychiatrist, believes that we can speak about suicide calmly and rationally, as he does in this book, and that we can ultimately accept suicide as part of the human condition. By maintaining statutes that determine that voluntary death is not legal, our society is forfeiting one of its basic freedoms and causing the psychiatric/medical establishment to treat individuals in a manner that is disturbingly inhumane according to Dr. Szasz. His important work asks and points to clear, intelligent answers to some of the most significant ethical questions of our time: Is suicide a voluntary act? Should physicians be permitted to prevent it? * Should they be authorized to abet it? The author's thoughtful analysis of these questions consistently holds forth patient autonomy as paramount; therefore, he argues, patients should not be prevented from exercising their free will, nor should physicians be permitted to enter the process by prescribing or providing the means for voluntary death. Dr. Szasz predicts that we will look back at our present prohibitory policies toward suicide with the same amazed disapproval with which we regard past policies toward homosexuality, masturbation, and birth control. This comparison with other practices that started as sins, became crimes, then were regarded as mental illnesses, and are now becoming more widely accepted, opens up the discussion and understanding of suicide in a historical context. The book explores attitudes toward suicide held by the ancient Greeks and Romans, through early Christianity and the Reformation, to the advent of modern psychiatry and contemporary society as a whole. Our tendency to define disapproved behaviors as diseases has created a psychiatric establishment that exerts far too much influence over how and when we choose to die. Just as we have come to accept the individual's right to birth control, so too must we accept his right to death control before we can call our society humane or free.
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