A Conjunctural Mapping of People’s Park

Following calls to spatialize conjunctures, this article proposes and practices conjunctural mapping through a case study of the ongoing struggle at People’s Park in Berkeley, California. Although the method of conjunctural analysis enables and requires an investigation into the multiple forces at work in the production of hegemony, such analyses tend to focus on cultural, economic, political, and social (or horizontal) dimensions of winning or contesting consent, without necessarily locating the formations of these expressions at different (vertical) scales. What is the role of the geographical in producing and countering hegemony, and how do we consider questions of scale in a conjunctural analysis? We offer an example through a conjunctural mapping of People’s Park, where the University of California, Berkeley, and park defenders address pressures and seize opportunities at the scales of the subject, city, and state to respectively redevelop or protect the park. Mapping their multiple geographies reveals how the neoliberal crisis (in higher education, affordable housing, and public space) takes place and requires work at each scale in the struggle for hegemonic settlement. Spiraling outward and upward, cases like People’s Park show that conjunctures are best analyzed through consideration of local complexities and scale articulations.