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 Lisiak
Guest: 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.