AMONG OTHERS IN A WORLD OF ONE’S OWN APPROPRIATION OF SPACE IN MODERN APARTMENT HOUSES IN THE EARLY POST-WAR PERIOD

Abstract: After the Second World War an intense period of modern housing construction started in Sweden, which suddenly changed the circumstances of everyday life for a great number of the Swedish population. The tenants were offered apartments equipped with central heating, kitchen with fridge and elec-tric cooker, and bathroom with bathtub. These dwellings gave rise to new expe-riences for everyone who moved in. By ordering their things and establishing new everyday routines and habits, people appropriated this new and unfamiliar space and made it one with their ongoing life. In this process of spatial organi-sation and routinisation new borderlines were drawn and new meanings were given to categories such as private-public, indoor-outdoor, home-outer world, us and them. Applying a theoretical approach from phenomenology, based on life story interviews with people who experienced these modern apartments in their capacity as the first tenants, the article elucidates how people through their daily habitual actions, in interaction with things and consociates both delim-ited and positioned themselves in connection with a wider world. Namely, how theyestablished a relationship between private and public realms, home and not-home, inside and outside, “us ” and “them”, and, furthermore, how they trans-formed an unfamiliar space into a familiar place, a place they could call their own. Key words: appropriation of space, experience of dwelling, modern apartment houses, notion of home, phenomenology, private/public domains After the Second World War housing shortage was a serious social problem in Sweden. For the Social Democratic Party, which governed the country at the time, the housing policy became an issue of high priority in their then political agenda. Unlike the housing policy of the 1930s, which was directed to the most vulnerable social groups, the new goal became to provide “good dwelling for everyone”, independent of social belonging and where in the country peopl