Memoire Online - Christiania : micro-société subversive ou "hippieland" ?

Contexte	Comment la place s'articule-t-elle avec le tissu urbain ? Est-elle en rupture ou en continuité ?
Approche sensible	Place ouverte - fermée ? Densité de population ? Place lumineuse - sombre ? Place sécurisante - angoissante ? Place étroite - spacieuse ? Place gaie - triste ? Place colorée - terne ? Place calme - bruyante ?
Analyse spatiale	Aspect monumental Formes Volume d'ensemble Relief Style dominant Bâtiments : - Organisation de la disposition - Couleur - Style : un ou plusieurs ? - Cohérence architecturale - Types de bâtiments : publique, privé, religieux Signalisations, expressions diverses Environnement naturel, végétal / urbain, bétonné
Les fonctions de la place	Fonction de circulation (voiture, piéton, vélo...) Fonction commerciale (vente de souvenirs, de haschich...) Fonction de rencontre (bar, épicerie, boulangerie...) Fonction résidentielle Fonction administrative (bureau de poste...) Rythme et activité au cours de la journée
Usages du lieu	Usage ponctuel / habituel ? Usage(s) de la place par les visiteurs ? Usage en rapport avec la fonction ? Interactions entre les gens
Lecture sociale	Christianites ou visiteurs ? Dominante sociale (homogène ou hétérogène socialement) ? · Age des personnes présentes ? · Sexe ? · Ethnie ? · Famille, personnes seules, couples... · Aspect physique Humeur

Annexe 2 : Retranscription partielle de l'entretien semi-directif avec Richard Lee Stevens16/04/2012

Richard Lee Stevens est un sociologue américain. Il habite Christiania depuis 1974. Il nous reçoit avec thé et café dans la salle commune de la zone Mælkebøtten où il habite, là où ont lieu les réunions. Il nous reçoit. La salle est assez grande, avec plusieurs tables de 6-7 places disposées parallèlement, et un espace cuisine. Nous le rencontrons dans le cadre du cours « Danish Society » qui organise cette visite de Christiania. Nous somme une dizaine d'étudiants à participer

Il commence par nous présenter Christiania sans revenir sur les détails, nous présente le lieu où nous sommes, puis commence par nous parler des prises de décision à Christiania :

[...] We have a talking stick. When you were finished speaking, you give it to somebody else who wants to speak. And when he's finished speaking, he gives the stick to somebody else who could speak. Then you put the stick down and we are all agreeable on it. At the beginning this was a relatively new, interesting ... process. But strangely enough, or (possibly?) enough we have kept ... the process all ... the day. That means we have never at any time made a vote. We have always spoken openly and the real condition is that there is usually people who suggest what we have to talk about, what kind of decision we have to make. Many time it's about, relationship with the government, with the outside government or some kind of relation with the violence or [some kind of] a bar, or problem in a bar. So we have someone raise the question and ... the question and try to present the different parts of the problem. And many people talking who know about the problem, they come and talk about it. And then the guide, the one who's running the meeting says «we've finished with that. Now it's open for discussion». And then the person who wants to speak, whoever raises their hand and they can speak.

At one point, the one who's running the meeting says `We're going to take a break now' and we try to precise where we are in ... So she or he raises the point again and he tells about what we have to talk: about this, it seemed to be we'd be ... agreeable on this part of it, but we're still not ... on other part. If everybody agree about that, we can go further.

Making one hour, two hour-discussion then try to reformulate the question until we come to the point when we have to make a decision and then we found that we are all agreeable.

This, takes a lot of time. And usually it goes where ... one meeting a big decision and it has to go after 3 areas. That maybe we need to talk about it. There are 13 areas in Christiania, and these areas were formed in 1979/1980. And they're self-supported areas, meaning they have their own decision-making process each one their areas. But they still have to relate to the common meeting. We made this area decision-making process for the 13 areas after we had a big problem with drugs, I mean the hard drugs.

So we made a... we blocked all the exits and entrances of Christiania all the way around for 24 hours a day for 3 months. And we'd not let anybody in, well you could come in or out but you got controlled in terms of hard drugs ... using hard drugs and we told them `you have to get out of Christiania you can't be here but we'll help you in treatment'. And we treated with our program we developed a program for treating the hard drugs at the time for ... in fact.

... For a number of months, they came back to Christiania to say they wanted to, and they get their house back. But they couldn't be here, while they were on hard drugs.

And that time, in order to be able to keep that controlling, you had to be much more close to people you live with. So we divided ourselves in the 13 areas. And these are geographical areas, and each area is responsible, for, not that time, just of keeping the hard drugs out but in all other kind, economic ... In terms of who moves in and who moves out, any kind of other problems in the area.

And these meetings are held in each area, one time a month and they're open to everybody at the meeting, anybody of the area ...

So this kind of way of working we have no leaders, and never had a ... leader, is an interesting way of living and we can see today that in fact, we just, for, a couple of... half a year ago we went to occupy Wall Street, some peoples of Christiania went to occupy Wall Street. In the beginning, cause `Occupy Wall Street' movement has no leaders also. All ...

What we're in now, even though we've been here for years, they've gradually begun to be other kind of social movements which have this kind of a character.

Previous social movements, whether we're talking about women's movement or civil rights' movements all of them had leaders. And people who worshipped ... who were used as leaders ... spokesmen. But this aspect is beginning to change now. And it's interesting because we've been doing this for 40 years. But there are being now starting other movements which are trying to develop a movement in another way of life, in another way of living, another way of existing another way of being with each other ...

It's not really easy, because you are really part of it... also with this aspect of no ownership.

When a house is available because someone moved out or died... you don't sell the house. The way it usually happens... in fact, recently there is a house which was open in this area here... in fact it was a house with a workshop. The woman who lived here died and she had also a house. Both her house and workshop had to be changed because she didn't have a house anymore and the way that usually happens is that in our area it is completely described in the internet in Danish. What happen is relatively complicated. We'll try to make it short. We look at the house and... the people in the area look at the house and there's a meeting about the house. What kind of condition it is in, how many people should live there...? Before it is necessary to repair the house, should it be a family? Is the house appropriate for children or what? And so, the next step is, the decision is made by the area and it's put in the newspaper... The newspaper that comes out every Friday. And this house is put in the newspaper and it says as well, if you want to apply for the house you can come to a meeting at this time, and the meeting is in this room is this area, and people come and watch who has this house. It's unusual really that we who live here, we sit around the edges and the people who want the house sit in the middle and one by one they stand up, they tell why the want the house. It means that you have to personally argue for why you want the house or why you should have the house.... So you have to present yourself. Generally the person who visits the house is a person who has a connection to Christiania, maybe he was living outside of Christiania and working in Christiania, maybe he was loaning a house, etc...

The reason why we have to be sure that this person who ?? the house will also be part of the decision making process and understand the decision making process, and will be active in it. ??? 60 000 people who want the house, because no one normally move out from Christiania, it only happens when they die or if they get married.

Even if I've been building up myself or if I've put a lot of expenses in the house, it's not my house it's Christiania's house. If I move out I'll have to give the house to Christiania.

You have a kind of responsibility, like on week-ends you have the working days. For instance, last week-end we had one in this area and everyone can participate like in cleaning the area, cleaning the bushes, or doing an activity... cleaning up the area. It is still voluntary, but we expect that you participate in those working week-ends. We usually have two or three times a year, and maybe two more during the spring.

One of the biggest problems for us is: the government wants us to be normal and they are pressuring us to apply by all the regulations in terms of the building codes. We have tried to negotiate to build new houses, but the government is no way interested in negotiating unfortunately.

So in our all 40 years we have been living here, we had that confrontation with the government. But we have existed under about seven or eight different governments, in the Danish parliament, and there have been some great differences: some governments just looked at Christiania as a social experiment and let us do what we want to do; but the last ten years there were a greater pressure to try to force Christiania to be normal. But it has not really worked at all. The government doesn't really exist; we exist and they exist, and they write letters to us and we try to communicate but there no real dialogue.

So we have in the last couple of years been working on a negotiation where we could buy Christiania. This decision in terms of Christiania, if we should buy or not buy, has been agreed with our community. We have had about 15 common meetings to make a decision. At the end that was in June one year ago, we ended this common meeting and said: «ok we buy». And now we are in the process of negotiating the aspects of buying the property and it should be finished for the 1^st of July. Buying is an unusual situation because a great part of the buildings in Christiania are National monuments. For example in the other side of the water, just over there! And the problem is you can't buy a national monument so we'll have to rent them. So we are buying most of the property but we can't really buy all. And the people like... I have a house that I have built but I own the house so I don't buy my own house but I rent the land underneath the house from the government. So it's very complicated, but we are in this process now. So now we are trying to sell shares, `people's shares' in order to buy Christiania by ourselves instead of loaning money and these shares will help. For the moment we have about 7 million kroners and we need 72 million. We don't think we will have all the money for the 1^st of July and we will borrow the rest of money. But it keeps going on, people will still be able to participate in helping us to buy Christiania.

So, we can have much more sovereignty over the property and in our decisions. There are areas in Copenhagen, where the government goes in, and helps rebuilding here, make it much better, much prettier ... so we are loaning the money from the state, and the state is guaranteeing that if we end up not being able to pay the loan back, then they would take Christiania again. But even if we are buying, we can't sell anyway. According to the agreement it is not possible to make any kind of profit on buying Christiania and then sell it to anybody else.

We are hoping we could build more houses, but we doubt we will be able to. And even if we can, we don't have much more space. There are some areas where we could build a house, but also we can't build on the water, but again this water is part of the national monument as it is a moat, part of the fortification so you can't build on it.

How can you explain the fact that Christiania still stands up after 40 years squatting, because in all the western countries squatting movements has been criminalized? Is it because of the Danish context?

It's very difficult... but I agree it is because of that Danish context. Because, in many ways, there are a lot of Danes who like Christiania...but they don't like it, and there is a word in Danish that doesn't exist in English to express this idea... It's kind of `ambiguous', but it is not exactly the same: it means that you like Christiania but you don't like it... It's a place they love to hate. Christiania today if it was closed, many people would say that Christiania is a very very inexpensive solution to an expensive problem. Because people who are living in Christiania now, if you close it now, they will need to find a place to take care of them, they couldn't survive without this kind of background around them. And I think that many Danish governments have come to the point that we are here for so long now that closing it would not be appropriate for the people living there and for the Danish people because Christiania is part of themselves. [...] I think it couldn't have existed in the United States or another country without the welfare state because the people who... many at the beginning were unemployed and had unemployment benefit... and I don't think it could have existed without that to things: the Danish mentality and the Danish way of thinking of the Danish welfare state, because it has protected us somewhere.

People living outside are too individualized, they can't feel they are part of something, part of the community, part of the collective, part of social networks. But here they feel like that. I can tell you many stories about that. For example, I have a neighbour, who a couple of years ago was becoming an alcoholic and drank quite a lot He was becoming very isolated. People decided to go to talk with him and invite him to diner, people who were living in the area, and try to find how to help him. And it worked! So people who are involved continue to try to make it work.

People outside Christiania really don't understand how can we live in a society where you don't call the police? There is noone stealing from each other here. The only problem we had in this area is that people where coming in the house. Many years ago, there was a couple who were together and they broke up. The boy came into the house one night and tried to beat her, and she escaped from him and came to her neighbor and then he left. What happened here, what we did was, because he lived here we spoke immediately with him, and talk to him about it, and all the area talked about it, and they made an agreement that he shouldn't talk with her, he shouldn't be with her whatsoever. The Christiania self-making decision, and make sure that it works ??? They don't talk to each other now, but they don't have a police report, and they were able to develop themselves.

In my way of thinking, I think Christiania is a way much better to thought, that the community solves it trying to talk with this person and make sure he won't do it again. And that is the way we have always worked. In terms of violence in a bar, it is the same thing. If someone has done some kind of violence in a bar and beat somebody, we call a meeting, and the person who has done the violence comes to that meeting, and Christiania decides after a dialogue with him in terms of what should be done. If he lives here, that recently happened to someone who lives in Christiania, he was living here for many years but we discovered that he was an alcoholic and was on drugs, so we told him and told him he could not be in Christiania if he didn't follow rehabilitation. So we paid for his rehabilitation, so he had to go through that for half a year and then he came back. So what we do: we paid for, we talked to him, we discussed with him, people around him had the responsibility in terms of protection, the rehabilitation was not done by Christiania but by a company outside Christiania but we paid for it. I think it is this kind of responsibility for the people living in the community, I think it's the best part. It doesn't work 100% of time, but it works a major part of the time. The people in the community have the responsibility of the well-being of people living here.

Police has said to the politicians that they can't control that hash at all now. Because they have tried to push it out of Christiania 30 -40 % of the population of people living in Denmark smoke or have smoked hash, and the opinion in Denmark is that it is not really too bad. There was discussion in parliament about should it be allowed... like the city of Copenhagen has had a law which said that they should make free hash in Copenhagen. But they can't do it because the state won't allow it, but they have passed this law. This law has gone to the parliament, which is now pressurized somehow to allow the city of Copenhagen to make an experiment with the legalization of hash.

We pay a rent; we pay all those taxes individually. I pay about 3 800 kr, so plus my wife that mean we pay 7 600kr per month including the rent of the house, the water and the electricity. And the house which I've built myself is about 17m², so it's not a big house. I addition to that I pay also for the fire. We had a discussion on that point because we pay individually and people live in large houses and other in small houses, so we are in the process now to take a decision about paying by square meters, and we have to make that decision and this is what is going to happen. It is not cheap to leave here, and we are also in the situation that maybe we gonna have a problem after we buy Christiania, maybe it will become much more expensive, because we are going to pay for loaning money, so we are in the process to figure out how to do that. This is going to be one of our biggest problems in terms of buying Christiania.

Because of the welfare state we have been able to allow a great number of people who are on invalid pensions to live in Christiania. My conviction is that Christiania couldn't exist without the welfare state. My own belief is that the welfare state has been a very important part of allowing Christiania to exist.

We are getting not more than 5% of ??? Most of white, there are very very few people who are not white people. We have a number of people coming from Greenland, unfortunately those who come from Greenland have a great alcohol problem, but they have an alcoholic problem in Greenland also

The youth house has always seen themselves when they existed as being separate from Christiania. Many of them have been autonom... They supported Christiania and we supported them...

Christiania is a very large area and it is very difficult to stop it, control it somehow. Christiania has always been a symbol; the youth house was also a symbol.Annexe 3 : Tableau synthétique du paysage politique parlementaire danois

après les élections législatives anticipées du 4 décembre 1973Annexe 4 : Frise chronologique de Christiania

Christiania : micro-société subversive ou "hippieland" ?

Annexes