Sharing economy – the space of sharing or consumption?

Abstract

This study aims to explore the social practice of sharing through the Polanyian substantive and formal meanings of economy and the concept of commoning based on empirical cases. The spread of digital technology enabled the emergence of various sharing practices not only among people living in proximity but among geographically distant citizens across the globe. Sharing economy is a widespread term lacking a universal definition. Sharing economy platforms like Airbnb or Uber enable the short-term renting of assets and services with the aim of profit maximisation. It will be argued in the paper that sharing with commercial purposes needs to be distinguished from the practices that are focused on the fulfilment of human needs with the genuine aim of bonding, mutual help and the feeling of responsibility. The social practice of sharing falls into the category of the substantive economy in the Polanyian sense, unlike the sharing economy platforms which are part of the formal economy.

Sharing is essential to the practice of commoning too, in which appropriators produce, maintain and sustain resources jointly. Commoning has a broader meaning than sharing. On the one hand, the practice of commoning involves the formation of rules of maintenance, monitoring and resource allocation. On the other hand, commoning as a movement can be interpreted as a political claim of self-organising communities to become independent of market and state-based mechanisms. Similarly to that, some part of the literature argues that the social practices of sharing is a third way to satisfy human needs beside the sphere of the market and state. Therefore, commoning provides an appropriate framework to understand the purposes of sharing in sharing-based initiatives. In the study three empirical cases which involve certain sharing elements are presented to explore what sharing means and how it is practiced and whether the cases can be considered as practices of commoning. The cases cover a community sewing workshop, co-housing, and an online, neighbourhood based platform where physical assets and favours are exchanged. Our study revealed that even though all the cases involve sharing in their operation but how sharing is understood differs in each of them. The sharing practices can be distinguished based on whether they belong to the formal economy or they can be described through the substantive understanding of the economy. ‘Pure’ communing practices was no identified among the cases because the participants interact with the market economy for a certain degree. However, some commoning practices, such as shared resources, pooling or lack of mercantile activities were explored along the cases. Our study aims to contribute to the debate around the contradictory interpretations of sharing activities of our times and attempts to link the theoretical concepts with case studies from the Hungarian context.