Communal Intimacy: Formalization, Egalitarianism, and Exchangeability in Collective Housing

Abstract

This article uses collective housing, a voluntary form of shared living positioned in between the conventional intimacy sphere and public life, to explore the relation between the organized and the intimate. Combining multisited observations and interviews, the study reveals collective housing to represent fairly depersonalized homes characterized by residential transition and formalization. Rather than addressing the dwellings in terms of detachment, however, the article demonstrates that they are exchange(st)able structures with existential bearing. It is through, not despite, the partially organized framework of daily chores and routines that closeness emerges. Grounded in these findings, the article calls for a reframing of intimacy outside of its traditional contexts and proposes the term "communal intimacy"to conceptualize a sociality of closeness that is bound not to exclusive dyads but to an inclusive relational infrastructure characterized by the strength of many weak ties.