Living the Utopia: Communal Living in Denmark and Britain

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    Abstract

    This article examines experiments in communal living in Britain and Denmark in the early 1970s, using life-story interviews from seventeen members of two British and two Danish communes. It examines communal living as a fusion of radical political principles with the practice of experimental collective living. It concludes that the movement's egalitarian principles of resource-sharing, gender equality and the avoidance of hierarchies were broadly achieved, even if the movement obviously did not realize its more ambitious objective of undermining the bourgeois family. Though none of the interviewees lives communally now, most remain faithful to the principles behind the movement.
    Original languageEnglish
    JournalCultural and Social History
    Volume8
    Issue number4
    Pages (from-to)513-530
    Number of pages18
    ISSN1478-0038
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2011

    Keywords

    • Communes
    • 1968
    • Denmark
    • Britain
    • collective living
    • Christinia
    • anarchism
    • gender
    • oral history

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