Paper short abstract:

Exploring such mundane things as the responsibility for garbage and the building of balconies in Danish cooperative housing associations, this ethnographic paper sets out to discuss how actions, social relations and flows of persons, tangible and intangible objects emerge as differently valued space in and around the home.

Paper long abstract:

In cooperative housing, much space cannot easily be categorized as either public or private: The space between what clearly belongs to the individual flats and households and what clearly belongs to 'the public' (the street, the sidewalk etc.) During my fieldwork in selected housing cooperatives in Copenhagen I realized that most of the discussions, arguments and disagreements centred around these spaces, big and small. In this paper, I explore how such "intermediate" space can be theorized. The ethnography of social life in housing cooperatives can help conceptualize the "in-between-ness" and blurring of boundaries that is characteristic of much urban social space.

The paper begins by reviewing symbolic analyses of the space of the home and the structuralist disctinction between the private and the public that has a special place in European history. The study of cooperative housing, however, invites seeing the space of the home, the house and its surroundings as actions and social relations, instead of starting out the analysis with presupposed places or spaces that are given ontological attributes. Seeing space instead as foldings (Deleuze) and as an emerging property of social relationships (Corsín Jiménez), the paper examines how residents in coops invest backyards, rooftop terraces, staircases, and balconies with different values and meanings through their social relations: kinship, friendship, neighbourship, community, individual freedom, peace and quiet. From this perspective, balconies are extensions of the family home and garbage and dirt from staircases is creeping into the family home and sense of orderliness.