Abstract
This article conceptualises care-(as)-work in collaborative housing and addresses current debates on the potential of cohousing to embody a feminist commons. A focus on purpose-built cohousing projects in the UK enables us to focus on the values present in the initial phases of collective design and on the ongoing negotiations and mediation that take place through social interactions, resident-led self-management, and formal and informal mutual support. Our analysis is based on in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with two communities in England. Our contribution focuses on two aspects of care-(as)-work: how difficult emotions related to cohousing maintenance work are minimised for the good of the common and how such work is differentially embodied. Returning to cohousing’s transformational capacities as a feminist commons, we show that while boundaries of care in commoning are critical to residents, they are inherently blurry, performative and gendered.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 660-678 |
| Number of pages | 19 |
| Journal | Housing, Theory and Society |
| Volume | 40 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 22 Aug 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We are grateful to all the community residents that generously allowed us into their lives. This work has been made possible with the generous support of the Tudor Trust, the British Society of Gerontology’s Averil Osborn Award for Participatory Research, Lancaster University’s (LU) Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences Research Fund, LU’s Centre for Ageing Research Seminar Series, and the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government (now the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities). Writing was supported through the ‘Inhabiting Radical Housing’ ERC Starting Grant project, n. 851940.
Funding Information:
The work was supported by the Lancaster University [0]; ‘Inhabiting Radical Housing’ ERC Starting Grant project [851940]; British Society of Gerontology’s Averil Osborn Award for Participatory Research [0]; Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government [0]; Tudor Trust [0]. We are grateful to all the community residents that generously allowed us into their lives. This work has been made possible with the generous support of the Tudor Trust, the British Society of Gerontology’s Averil Osborn Award for Participatory Research, Lancaster University’s (LU) Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences Research Fund, LU’s Centre for Ageing Research Seminar Series, and the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government (now the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities). Writing was supported through the ‘Inhabiting Radical Housing’ ERC Starting Grant project, n. 851940.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Structured keywords
- SPS Centre for Research in Health and Social Care
Keywords
- collaborative housing
- commoning
- care-work
- feminist commons
- emotional labour