The meaning of the park

Abstract

The occupation of public urban space is a prominent feature in most descriptions of the global wave of protests after 2011. This paper examines the occupation of one significant space, New York’s Zuccotti Park, to investigate how first, ‘occupying’ became the central form of practice of what later was called Occupy Wall Street. By reconstructing the habitus of the movement’s core constituency and its resonance with the practice of the occupation, this investigation also explains why it was so difficult for the movement to evolve into other forms. It sketches out how the practice of occupying influenced the cooperation between members of different social classes participating in the protest and compares the development of this occupation to the very different trajectory of the Occupy movement in Germany. It is argued that the US occupation only temporarily overcame obstacles to mobilizing the discontent of those young adults that found themselves biographically blocked from joining the new petty bourgeoisie and to building alliances with other social groups in the USA of the post-recession era. Since the eviction from the park reinforced these obstacles, it triggered a de-mobilizing dynamic.