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.
Aftale mellem Fonden Fristaden Christiania og Den Danske Stat (2013) Aftale om Fonden Fristaden Christianias forpligtelser til renovering, drift og vedligeholdelse af fortidsmindet, de statsbygninger, der udlejes til fonden, infrastruktur, belysning, forsyning, samt boligtildeling og privatister (aftale nr. 5).
3.
AlexanderN (2007) The carceral city and the city of refuge: Belfast fiction and urban form. The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies33(2): 28–38.
4.
AltinRMincaC (2017) The ambivalent camp: Mobility and excess in a quasi-carceral Italian asylum seekers hospitality centre. In: TurnerJPetersK (eds) Carceral Mobilities: Interrogating Movement in Incarceration. London: Routledge, pp. 30–43.
5.
AmorouxC (2009) Normalizing Christiania: Project Clean Sweap and the normalization plan in Copenhagen. City and Society21(1): 108–132.
6.
BeckettKMurakawaN (2012) Mapping the shadow carceral state: Toward an institutionally capacious approach to punishment. Theoretical Criminology16(2): 1–24.
7.
Benda-BeckmannF (2000) Relative publics and property rights. In: GeislerCDanekerG (eds) Property and Values. Alternatives to Public and Private Ownership. Washington, DC: Island Press, pp. 151–173.
8.
BlandySSibleyD (2010) Law, boundaries and the production of space. Social and Legal Studies19(3): 275–284.
9.
BlomleyN (2003) Law, property, and the geography of violence: The frontier, the survey, and the grid. Annals of Association of American Geographers93(1): 121–141.
10.
BlomleyN (2010) Cuts, flows and the geographies of property. Law, Culture and Humanities7(2): 203–216.
DavisM (1990) City of Quartz. Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. London: Verso.
17.
DolovichS (2011) Exclusion and control in the carceral state. Berkley Journal of Criminal Law16(2): 259−339.
18.
FludernikM (1999) Carceral topography: Spatiality, liminality and corporality in the literary prison. Textual Practice13(1): 43–77.
19.
FoucaultM (1995) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. [Surveiller et punir (1975)]. SheridanA (trans). 2nd edition.New York: Vintage Books.
20.
FrostN (2006) Punitive State: Crime, Punishment, and Imprisonment Across the United States. New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC.
21.
GillN (2013) Mobility versus liberty? The punitive uses of movement within and outside carceral environments. In: MoranDGillNConlonD (eds) Carceral Spaces. Mobility and Agency in Imprisonment and Migrant Detention. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, pp. 19–36.
22.
GillNConlonDMoranDet al. (2018) Carceral circuitry: New directions in carceral geography. Progress in Human Geography42(2): 183–204.
23.
Hall ThorbjörgD (2014) Countercultural space does not persist: Christiania, and the role of music. In: WhiteleySJedediahS (eds) Countercultures and Popular Music. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 205–222.
24.
Hellström ReimerM (2012) Christiania Copenhagen: A common out of ordinary. In: JorgensenAKeenanR (eds) Urban Wildscapes. Oxon: Routledge, pp. 120–130.
25.
JarvisH (2011) Alternative visions of home and family life in Christiania: Lessons for mainstream. In: ThörnHWasshedeCNilsonT (eds) Space for Urban Alternatives? Christiania 1971–2011.Vilnius: BALTO Print, pp. 156–180.
26.
JarvisH (2013) Against the ‘tyranny’ of single-family dwelling: Insights from Christiania at 40. Gender, Place and Culture20(8): 939–959.
27.
KarpantschofR (2011) Bargaining and barricades – The political struggle over the freetown Christiania 1971–2011. In: ThörnHWasshedeCNilsonT (eds) Space for Urban Alternatives? Christiania 1971–2011.Vilnius: BALTO Print, pp. 38−67.
28.
Klima-, Energi- og Bygningsministeriet (1989) LOV nr 399 af 07/06/1989 (historiskt), Lov om anvendelse af Christianiaområdet.
29.
Klima-, Energi- og Bygningsministeriet (2004) LOV nr 431 af 09/06/2004 Lov om ændring af lov om anvendelse af Christianiaområdet.
30.
Københavns Politi (2015) Københavns Politis indsats på Christiania. Unpublished report by the Københavns Politi.
31.
Lund HansenA (2006) Space Wars and the New Urban Imperialism. Lund: Lund University.
32.
Lund HansenA (2011) Christiania and the right to the city. In: ThörnHWasshedeCNilsonT (eds) Space for Urban Alternatives? Christiania 1971–2011. Vilnius: BALTO Print, pp. 288–308.
33.
ManjikianM (2013) Securitization of Property Squatting in Europe. New York: Routledge.
34.
MidtgaardSF (2007) ‘But suppose everyone did the same’ – The case of Danish utopian micro-society of Christiania. Journal of Applied Philosophy24(3): 299–315.
35.
MilhaudOMoranD (2013) Penal space and privacy in French and Russian prisons. In: MoranDGillNConlonD (eds) Carceral Spaces. Mobility and Agency in Imprisonment and Migrant Detention. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, pp. 167–182.
36.
MoellerKK (2009) Police crackdown on Christiania in Copenhagen. Crime Law Society Change52: 337–345.
37.
MoranD (2012) ‘Doing time’ in carceral space: Timespace and carceral geography. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography94(4): 305–316.
38.
MoranD (2015) Carceral Geography. Spaces and Practices of Incarceration. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited.
39.
MoranDKeinänenA (2012) The ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of prisons: Carceral geography and home visits for prisoners in Finland. Fennia19(2): 62–76.
40.
MoranDGillNConlonD (2013) Dialogues across carceral space: Migration, mobility, space and agency. In: MoranDGillNConlonD (eds) Carceral Spaces. Mobility and Agency in Imprisonment and Migrant Detention. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, pp. 239–249.
41.
MoranDPiacentiniLPallotJ (2011) Disciplined mobility and carceral geography: Prisoner transport in Russia. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers37(3): 446–460.
42.
PallotJ (2005) Russia’s penal peripheries: Space, place and penalty in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers30(1): 98–112.
43.
PetersKTurnerJ (2017) Carceral mobilities: A manifesto for mobilities, an agenda for carceral studies. In: TurnerJPetersK (eds) Carceral Mobilities: Interrogating Movement in Incarceration. London: Routledge, pp.1–14.
44.
PhiloC (2011) Security of geography/geography of security. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers37(1): 1–7.
45.
RannilaP (2013) Laki ja julkinen tila Christianian vapaakaupungissa Kööpenhaminassa. In: ForssA-MRannistoT (eds) Kaupunkien estetiikkaa. Tampere: University Press of Eastern Finland, pp. 28–41.
46.
SchlieheAK (2014) Inside ‘the carceral’: Girls and young women in the Scottish criminal justice system. Scottish Geographical Journal130(2): 71–85.
47.
StaeheliLA (2011) Political geography: Where’s citizenship?Progress in Human Geography35(3): 393–400.
48.
ThörnH (2012) In between social engineering and gentrification: Urban restructuring, social movements, and the place politics of open space. Journal of Urban Affairs34(2): 153–168.
49.
ThörnHWasshedeCNilsonT (2011) Introduction. In: ThörnHWasshedeCNilsonT (eds) Space for Urban Alternatives? Christiania 1971–2011. Vilnius: BALTO Print, pp. 7–37.
50.
TurnerJ (2012) Criminals with ‘community spirit’: Practising citizenship in the hidden world of the prison. Space and Polity16(3): 321–334.
51.
TurnerJ (2013) Disciplinary engagements with prisons, prisoners and the penal system. Geography Compass7(1): 35–45.
52.
Ugespejlet 36/2016 (newspaper advertisement).
53.
ValverdeM (2014) Studying the governance of crime and security: Space, time and jurisdiction. Criminology and Criminal Justice14(4): 379–391.
54.
VanoloA (2013) Alternative capitalism and creative economy: The case of Christiania. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research37(5): 1785–1798.
55.
VasudevanA (2015a) The makeshift city: Towards a global geography of squatting. Progress in Human Geography39(3): 338–359.
56.
VasudevanA (2015b) The autonomous city: Towards a critical geography of occupation. Progress in Human Geography39(3): 316–337.
57.
von Benda-BeckmannFvon Benda-BeckmannK (2014) A legal anthropological perspective on the temporalities of space in plural legal orders. In: BravermanIBlomleyNDelaneyDet al. (eds) The Expanding Spaces of Law – A Timely Legal Geography. Stanford, CT: Stanford University Press, pp. 30–52.
58.
WasshedeC (2016) Normalization of children: Politics and images of children in the Freetown of Christiania. Childhood23(2): 207−220.
