Property and carceral spaces in Christiania, Copenhagen

Abstract

This article addresses the recent legal and property changes, and their socio-spatial consequences in Christiania, Copenhagen. During recent years the community that has always been against private ownership has lost its special legal status, and has become a property owner of a vast area in the middle of Copenhagen. We analyse the situation in relation to Christiania’s current housing condition, individual residents’ privatisation efforts, and decades-long normalisation efforts by the state. We argue that the processes of normalisation, legalisation, criminalisation and privatisation are expressions of the carceral in more-than-institutional context, and that questions of property are strongly involved in these carceral practices in Christiania. Not only in the relations between Christiania and the state, but also in socio-spatial relations inside of the community, defining who is included or excluded, or how people behave towards each other. Moreover, a part of the community is cultivating a carceral culture towards those in favour of privatisation, using the rights of the property owner and the community’s ideologies as justifications.