Paper short abstract:

The common property frontier of London's waterways are shared by CC'ers whose boat-self sufficiency uncouples them from the city infrastructure and statist systems. CC'ers dwell in 'watery regions of refuge' which offer illegibility to the state in a highly surveilled city (Scott, J. 2009, viv).

Paper long abstract:

I interview CC'ers on Londons waterways who are required to move every two weeks by the Canal and River Trust. This itinerant group describe a 'subterranean world' (Ben) operating independently of statist systems making for more autonomous, self-directed lives.

Harold Barclay states that a 'group's curbing of domination is an epiphenomenon of material circumstances' (in Boehm, C. et al, 1993; p240). CC'ers' nomadic acts of dwelling and material conditions create boat-self sufficiency which uncouples them from city infrastructure and statist systems, eliciting anarchic principles. This is not the anarchy of riot and revolution, but embodied principles that evoke Proudhon who first used the term anarchism to describe 'cooperation without hierarchy or state rule' (in Scott, J., 2012; xii). I do not suggest that CC'ers identify as anarchists- but expand on informants' accounts revealing a particular freedom from the state. These anarchic principles are 'active in the aspirations and political action of people who have never heard of anarchism' (Scott, J. 2012, xii).

Scott posits that egalitarianism centres around the material condition of a 'common property frontier' which equalises access to resources. Illegibility is threatened by 'enclosure of the commons and encroachment by the state' which forms inequality by fixing class structures and making land inheritable (2009; p277-278). Water is a common property frontier shared by CC'ers allowing them to occupy and withhold urban space from becoming otherwise claimed and monopolised. This echoes Castells description of citizens who anarchically reclaim urban space that landlords and bureaucrats once evicted them from (2012; p11).