"There's always people around to help". A study of worldviews, social practices, and autonomy in Freetown Christiania

Abstract: Sustainability science has recently seen a growth of literature focused on individuals’ “inner dimensions” as a vehicle for transformative social change, an approach argued to be too individualistic. This thesis fits between both excessively structural and individualistic models of social transformation by framing inner dimensions into a theory of social change through collective action. Christiania was chosen as a case study of an occupied space to probe into the interactions between material and symbolic work. Through semi-structured interviews and participant observation, I found that the expanded sense of community and the co-operative habitus enable a degree of social experimentation which allows the establishment of practices following alternative worldviews. The introduction of neoliberal worldviews and other pressures caused by conflicts with the state threaten this. I call for more research on the ways that autonomous spaces serve as laboratories for communal ways of living and grounding alternative worldviews.