L’habitat participatif comme exemplum des évolutions socio-politiques récentes

Abstract

After exploring the long history of certain aspects of cohousing, this article examines the specific forms it has taken in the twenty-first century. An enquiry extending over twelve years has shown that cohousing can be considered the guiding theme of an incipient ideological model that is superseding the model of modernity.Cohousing is informed by a two-pronged ideological dynamic: on the one hand, an anti-capitalist activism invoking the principles of human rights and republican democracy; on the other, an ecological movement whose drivers are more moral than political. Though often expansive, complex, varied and rarely theorized, these ideologies share a desire for autonomy as well as an ethos of solidarity and ecological concern, all of which progressively construct a new humanism that supersedes—but differs from—modernity.This revised modern humanism is a direct consequence of recent societal crises. It remains strongly marked by over two centuries of republicanism but also points up the many cracks in a model that is slowly slipping away.

Keywords

• Cohousing
• Middle Classes
• Ideologies
• Humanism
• Sustainability