Comparing conjuncturally, part 1: Framing conjunctural analysis

Conjunctural analysis is associated with a distinctive (if rather weakly codified) methodology. As an epistemological and political orientation, it holds significant implications for conceptualization, research design, casing, and for the practice and purpose of comparison, even though it does not come with fixed rules or a ready-made toolkit. Conjunctural analyses are concerned to confront complex, multiple, intersecting causation in politically salient, contested, and open situations; to explore conditions of existence, (re)combination, and possibility; to problematize received constructs, concepts, and categories, as well as hegemonic norms and commonsense meanings; and to mobilize reflexive strategies for casing, theorizing, and research practice. This two-part paper explores conjunctural approaches to comparative research design and practice as a methodological challenge and opportunity, but also as a distinctive response to enduring concerns in human geography, with the interplays between generalized processes and particular outcomes, the structural and the contingent, the “global” and the “local,” and other such persistent but problematic binaries. This first part of the paper engages the conjunctural and conjunctural analysis from a spatial perspective, opening up the question of comparison. The second part of the paper is an exploratory discussion of conjunctural approaches to comparison.