Commitments beyond coupledom

Negotiating relational futures in Finnish small-scale communes

Bibliographic Data

ID4356124
AuthorsAnna Heinonen (0000-0002-4859-8828, Culture and Society (SKY), University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume33
Issue2
Pages149-169
Publication date2024-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTime & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0961-463X • E-ISSN: 1461-7463
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0961463x231191613
OpenAlexW4385701711
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited43

In this paper, I analyze the possibilities for organizing one's personal life around co-residing friendship and roommate relationships in the life course position of adulthood. The normative significance of coupledom and procreation as markers of adulthood has hardly diminished, although the nuclear family model has opened up in past decades in Euro-American countries. I argue that the close connection between coupledom and adult status sidelines communal living as a relational arrangement when persons age beyond the socially shared understanding of youth. Moreover, resisting this temporal order leads communal dwellers into a socially structured negotiation of their future trajectories, where personal autonomy in friendship and roommate relations poses an intra-relational obstacle to building a communal future. The paper is based on 31 interviews with residents of Finnish small-scale communes. Communal dwellers' negotiations of future trajectories dealt with finding someone to build their life with, whether commitment could be expected in friendship and roommate relations, and whether long-term communal living is compatible with existing housing structures

Autonomy · Business · Friendship · Futures contract · Geography · Negotiation · Normative · Order (exchange · Political science · Scale (ratio · Social science · Sociology · Gender Studies · Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving · Law · Migration, Aging, and Tourism Studies · Psychology · Social Psychology · Youth Education and Societal Dynamics

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