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Abstract
The idea of cohousing is alive in many industrialized countries today. It is seen as an interesting alternative way of living in late modern cities, where a majority of people live in families, couples or single households, but since there is a general lack of knowledge of what it means to live in a cohousing unit there are also prejudices. In cohousing units, the members are bound up to each other not by family ties but as separate persons with different relations. The inhabitants are living in different households and flats and with common spaces. Architecture is important as well as the organization of cooperation and everyday life. This article presents results from a study on “cohousing for second half of life” in the capital city of Sweden. The main question is: What does it mean to live in a cohousing unit and who is living here? Through in-depth interviews, we found that the residents in this type of dwelling underscore the possibility of both autonomy and dependency, privacy and togetherness. Theoretically, the relations in a cohousing unit can neither be characterized as Gemeinschaft nor Gesellschaft but at the same time it could be both/and. This evokes a third social relationship of the Bund – a theoretical concept beyond the dichotomy of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft.
Notes
1. Another name is “cohousing units for middle aged, and aged people”. Before, these units were called cohousing + 40, but this is forbidden to do now as it is seen as discrimination. The actual discrimination law came at the year of 2014. http://www.do.se/Fakta/Diskrimineringslagen/.
2. There are different national definitions and terminologies for cohousing. One is “a type of collaborative housing in which residents actively participate in the design and operation of their own neighborhoods” http://www.cohousing.org/ Cohousing is the term that is spreading rapidly as a universal term and is related to terms as cooperative, collective, communal, collaborative and also to community (see Vestbro Citation2010). Different national projects are presented in CoHousing Cultures (Citation2012).
3. This self-work/self-organized model is firmly associated with Swedish cohousing units today.
This explains why student corridors and student buildings are not said to be cohousing units; even if a group of students lives in the same building, their everyday lives are mostly individual and private, as they attend to different schools and courses and have no regular common dinners.
4. In the year of 2013, a new revised edition was published of an important book within “Kollektivhus.nu” (eds. E. Grip, K. Kärnekull and I. Sillén). This book is an introduction how to organize a cohousing unit both practically and socially. It is full of experiences and ideas.
5. Titles include Palm Lindén (Citation1992), Caldenby (Citation1992), Woodward, Vestbro and Grossman (Citation1989), Vestbro (Citation1982), Gromark (Citation1983), Pedersen (Citation1991), Madigan (Citation1984), Blomstrand (Citation1988).
6. This statistical forecast was made by SCB, The Central Statistical Office in Sweden (2010). See also Sandstedt and Abramsson (Citation2012), which is a presentation of the new politics in Sweden for elderly people and the ideas of alternative forms of living and institutional support. Interesting is that the self-organized cohousing is not regarded as a type of life form that should be given special subsidies by the state or municipality. Its members are seen as too well-being and active.
7. This report, “Homeless Citation2014,” comes from Stockholm City Mission and is reliably reviewed by an academic expert in social work.
8. In the first English translation of Tönnies’ book (Citation1963), Charles P. Loomis translates the title into Community and Society. However, Loomis contends that these words are insufficient equivalents of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, so he uses the original terms in the book. We do the same.
9. This theoretical approach formulated in terms of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft might stand out as old-fashioned. We emphasize, however, that this discourse is still relevant in the analysis of the dualistic thinking inherent in assessing contemporary social phenomena, in determining whether they are right or wrong, good or bad, open or closed, genuine or artificial, etc. In order to nuance dualistic thinking (which late-modern theoretical approaches often aim at), we need to recognize it first. This explains why we do not regard Tönnies’ concepts as outdated but relevant.
10. All quotes by Asplund (Citation1991) are translated by the authors.
11. “De erfarenheter som ligger till grund för begreppsparet är närmast universella”. This duality is also the theme in Jacobsson and Sandstedt (Citation2010). The feeling of the Common is here the paradox.
12. The history of cohousing is narrated in different ways, and its origin and positive examples are found in different historical periods. Cohousing is associated with the old Swedish villages and the countryside but also with French peasants, American and French utopian industrialists, Soviet collective houses, American family hotels and Celtic convents. See Benevolo (Citation1967), Vestbro (Citation2010, 43), Gromark (Citation1983, 179–183), Hellspong and Löfgren (Citation1974), Caldenby and Walldén (Citation1979), Shin Choi and Paulsson (Citation2011, 133–134).
13. This is half of the total amount of people living in the units chosen for this research.
14. From the interviews we learned that cohousing life is not free from conflicts, but this aspect has not been our main focus. Krekula (Citation2012) has studied a conflict between elderly and younger persons in housing where it is necessary to do some common work. The analysis is done in terms of “we” and “them”. A problem with such a theoretical framework is that it becomes static and ignores the flow of opinions in different situations.
15. Historically, many different social organizations have characterized themselves as Bund: right wing political groups, left wing political groups, anarchistic associations and youth movements, to mention a few (Hetherington Citation1994, 3–6). Before World War I, the concept was politically appropriated by the Nazis, who “propagated the idea of Bünde as the germinating cells of a fascist state” (Hetherington Citation1994, 6) – which explains why Schmalenbach’s essay was not translated into English until 1977.
16. We prefer to describe contemporary society as late-modern rather than postmodern since the latter gives the impression that the modern era is something we have left behind.
17. In the English translation from 1977, Bund is interpreted as communion, but we have chosen to use the original term.
18. Compare with Simmel (Citation1903) and Wirth (Citation1938).